Saints Cornelius and Cyprian | Wednesday 16 September

Today is Wednesday 16 September, the feast of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, in the twenty fourth week of Ordinary time.

The Sons of Korah sing Psalm 128, Blessed is the One, the One who fears the Lord…

Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Luke.

Luke 7:31-35

"To what then will I compare the people of this generation, and what are they like?  They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not weep.’  For John the Baptist has come eating no bread and drinking no wine, and you say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners! Nevertheless, wisdom is vindicated by all her children."

Jesus describes a people who are unresponsive, contrary, not in the mood. Like a sulky teenager, moping around, listless and bored, yet spurning all invitations and suggestions. But that is a space we have all inhabited from time to time. What invitation to celebrate and give thanks might the Lord be making to me now, that I might not be in the mood to hear?

And in what ways, that I tend not to notice, might the Lord be inviting me to sorrow and remorse?

As you listen to the reading again, can you hear the frustration in Jesus’s voice? - the exasperation of one whose gentle invitations are spurned and ignored?

Can I ask the Lord now to transform any moodiness in me? - to help me hear his gentle invitations in my life, and to respond with excitement and delight?

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.