Speak Lord: Good Lord, speak…

The Psalm on the 4th Sunday of Lent enjoins us to ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’.

Taste  and see that the Lord is good.

I will bless the Lord at all times,
his praise always on my lips;
in the Lord my soul shall make its boast.
The humble shall hear and be glad.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Glorify the Lord with me.
Together let us praise his name.
I sought the Lord and he answered me;
from all my terrors he set me free.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Look towards him and be radiant;
let your faces not be abashed.
This poor man called, the Lord heard him
and rescued him from all his distress.

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

Psalm 33:2-7

In the Gospel we hear at Mass on Sunday – the parable of the Prodigal Son – the Prodigal has a range of hungers: for his inheritance; for wine, women and song; for pig swill even. His cravings beggar him.

It seems only in his return to his father does he find the feast that is worthy of him, albeit a feast of which he himself may not be worthy. And yet it is a feast  which his father freely and joyfully provides to welcome home his son.

In our Mass the Lord himself provides the feast to welcome us home, makes himself the feast at which we are reconciled, kept safe from sin, and welcomed home.

Taste and see that the Lord is good…

• What of the goodness of the Lord most impresses you?
• How do you seek to imitate or otherwise respond to that goodness in your life?

Tabernacle, Evry, France. (c) 2015, Allen Morris.

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Speak Lord: Of gifts to share

The gospel at Mass today, the 17th Sunday of Ordinary time, tells of the multiplication of loaves and fishes to feed the hungry crowd.

In the first reading there is a foreshadowing of the miraculous feeding in the hills of Galilee.

A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing Elisha, the man of God, bread from the first-fruits, twenty barley loaves and fresh grain in the ear.’ ‘Give it to the people to eat’, Elisha said. But his servant replied, ‘How can I serve this to a hundred men?’ ‘Give it to the people to eat’ he insisted ‘for the Lord says this, “They will eat and have some left over.”’ He served them; they ate and had some left over, as the Lord had said.

2 Kings 4:42-44

The Old Testament establishes patterns that find their fulfilment in the New. And those great miracles of love that we find in the New Testament have their echoes, their wake, in our own lives.

The acts of love and kindness and generosity that we sometimes do for others, or others sometimes do for us, again and again have their true origin not just in human kindness, but in the love of God communicated in Christ, the living Bread.

We do well to thank one another for the part we play but, above all and with all, let us give thanks also to God.

Photograph of bread stall, Jerusalem. (c) 2013, Allen Morris.