He seeks to remake them as a people, to remind them of their childhood though Abraham, Isaac and Jacob so that they might recognize their divine filiation, and he leads them to the waters of the Red Sea that prefigure baptism. They are laboring under the burdens of Pharaoh and God comes to their aid. We see this in what he does with the Israelites in the first reading. And he does that not by removing us from work and difficulties but precisely through our labors and hardships. In green pastures you lead me to grace and besides restful waters you refresh me.” He thoroughly remakes us in his image in baptism and that life is meant to continue. In Psalm 23, we pray in anticipation of this remaking, “The Lord is my Shepherd. The word translated “refresh” (or poorly translated as “give us rest,” which we are tempted to misinterpret as inactivity) actually means “remake.” Jesus wants to give us a fresh start, a new beginning, to bring us back to our spiritual infancy. He says if we do, he will give us “rest,” he will “refresh” us. Jesus gives us this invitation to enter as children more and more deeply into God’s revelation precisely through all that we’re going through, through all the various obstacles and challenges. These experiences make us run to God the Father like a young child hearing powerful thunder for the first time runs to earthly parents. The first is “come”: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened.” The way we are going to be able to learn how to grow more deeply in spiritual childhood is precisely through our labors and burdens, through our hardships and sacrifices.He gives us three powerful verbs to characterize the means by which he seeks to incorporate us into his own childlike sonship. Today in the readings, Jesus deepens the understanding we need to have of those realities and shows us ever more the means. Yesterday we focused on how God reveals himself and seeks to enter into a personal relationship with us but in order for that to occur we must have a childlike receptivity through entering into Jesus’ own filiation.The following points were attempted in the homily:
To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time, Year I Sacred Heart Convent of the Sisters of Life, New York, NY
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