Friday 19 August 2022

Today is Friday the 19th August, in the 20th week of Ordinary Time.

The monks of Pluscarden Abbey sing 'Venite filii, audite me'. Come, my sons and daughters, listen to me …. Come to the Lord and be enlightened; and your faces will not be put to shame.’ As I enter into prayer now, can I sense that invitation from God? Can I hear those words spoken to me? And accept the welcome, and that reassurance that God wants to give me?

(Lyrics currently unavailable)


Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Matthew.

Matthew 22:34-40

When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He said to him, ‘ “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’

We heard yesterday from the prophet Ezekiel how God said ‘I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances’. So, here, in the words of God’s own Son, is the greatest of these statutes and ordinances: to love God in an all-embracing way, with all my heart, all my soul and all my mind. And to love my neighbour as myself. I will need help with this… I ask God to help me know where to begin…


It might be simply right here, right now. Where, for example, might I want to replace an attitude, a comment, a withholding of love, with a generosity of spirit, a kindness?


As you listen to the passage again, imagine God putting his spirit in you, changing your heart in a situation, giving you what you need in order to love.


In these closing moments, bring before this God of love, whatever is on your heart. Let this God of love look at you. Let a loving conversation take place.


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.