Agents of God’s Mercy

Dear Friend,

Preparing for Mass last Sunday, I found myself wrapped up in the sound of the Mission bell, in its clear and resolute call to prayer, a summons of the heart now made audible. Earlier that morning, it was the sound of the owl that caught my attention, calling me to the mystery of the garden, to gratitude for its dawning color. Here I was, I thought, connecting – or being connected or grafted through sound with life-charged realities larger than myself, like a branch to a vine.  

In the days that followed I happened on a passage in N.T. Wright’s biography of St. Paul that helped me make sense of my early morning experiences. Summarizing “the challenge of Paul” in a final chapter, Wright has this to say: “As far as Paul was concerned…humans were made to stand at the threshold of heaven and earth – like an ‘image’ in a temple no less – and to be the conduit through which God’s life would come to earth and earth’s praises would rise to God.” He goes on to say that those “grasped by grace in the gospel” and those who bear witness to it “are not merely beneficiaries, recipients of God’s mercy; they are also agents.”

This Sunday at the 11:00 am Mass, Bishop Szkredka, through a laying on of hands and holy oil, will complete the initiation into Jesus Christ of those he confirms and make them “agents” of Christ. In the Gospel of John, we will hear that God has chosen them – and all of us - as he chose St. Paul and St. Francis. We move boldly from a holy threshold where a new song has begun. With the bell and the owl, it is a song of the saving power of love. We sing it with our lives.

Gratefully,

Father Dan ofm