Eventide & Altar

Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him, glory will dwell in our land. The psalm's near is the word the exile needed - not the distant eschatological hope but the near salvation, the glory that will inhabit the specific land. The reconciled virtues - kindness and truth meeting, justice and peace kissing - are the marks of its arrival.

The book of Amos ends with the restoration promise after chapters of judgment. The fallen hut of David will be raised. The land will be replanted. Never again shall they be plucked from the ground. The severity of the prophetic word was always in service of the restoration that the severity was preparing the people to receive.

New wine into fresh wineskins. In the evening of life the new wine question recurs: what is God doing now that requires wineskins I have not yet made? The old structures of piety - formed in one season - may not be able to hold what the Lord is pouring in this one. The fresh wineskins are not a rejection of the past; they are the vessel equal to the present gift.

The Joyful Mysteries trace the beginning of the restoration - the hut of David being raised in the Annunciation, the new wine arriving in the infant at Bethlehem. Pray them tonight as a meditation on the God who ends every judgment with the promise that the ruined hut will be raised.

• For those in the evening of life who have lived through multiple seasons of new wine and old wineskins, that the wisdom to recognize the new and make room for it would remain, we pray to the Lord.
• Where the restoration feels deferred - where the on-that-day has been waited for across many years - that the nearness of salvation would be more real than the weight of the ruin, we pray to the Lord.
• In this month of the Precious Blood, for the blood that is the wine of the new covenant - poured into the wineskins of those who receive it for the first time, we pray to the Lord.

Never again shall they be plucked from the land I have given them. Name one thing you have been given - a relationship, a calling, a gift - that you are holding too loosely, as though it might be plucked. Receive it more firmly this weekend as something given by God who promises never again to pluck.