Eventide & Altar

Our God is in heaven; whatever he wills, he does. The contrast with the idols is total: the idols are the work of human hands, cannot do anything, and form their worshippers in their own likeness. The God in heaven is the one who acts, who wills, who moves.

Jesus went around all the towns and villages. The going-around is the opposite of the strategic deployment of resources. He went to all of them. Teaching. Proclaiming. Curing. And at the sight of the crowds - not the abstractions about the crowds, the sight of them - his heart was moved with pity.

The heart that is moved with pity at the sight of the troubled and abandoned is the heart being formed in the likeness of the one who made it. The idol-maker becomes like the idol. The worshiper of the God who is moved with pity becomes one who is moved with pity.

The Sorrowful Mysteries trace the suffering of the one whose heart was moved with pity all the way to the cross - the one who saw the crowds and then became the sacrifice for them. Pray them tonight as a meditation on what it cost the shepherd to gather the troubled and abandoned.

• For those who have been sowing wind through sustained inattention to the Lord, that the whirlwind-warning would arrive gently before the harvest of it, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who are troubled and abandoned in the specific towns and villages of our community, that laborers would be sent from this household, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Precious Blood month, for the blood poured out by the one who saw the crowds and was moved with pity rather than management, we pray to the Lord.

Their makers shall be like them. What have you been making yourself like this week - what are you trusting, attending to, forming yourself around? And what would one act of being moved with pity look like tonight for one specific person who is troubled and abandoned in your immediate world?