Eventide & Altar

His kindness endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. The psalm gives the horizon: the kindness that sustained the eagle-wings journey to Sinai has been sustaining every generation since, and will sustain every generation to come. We are in that continuity.

While we were still enemies we were reconciled through the death of his Son. Paul says this as the ground of the boasting: not that we loved first, not that we deserved it, but that the reconciliation came at exactly the wrong moment from our side - while we were enemies - and therefore proves the love beyond any doubt.

His heart was moved with pity. The pity that moved Jesus to send the Twelve is the same pity that carried Israel on eagle wings, the same love that sent the Son while we were still sinners. In the evening of life you have been the object of that pity and the recipient of that carrying. You have also been a laborer in the harvest - sent, given authority, told to give freely what was freely received.

The Glorious Mysteries trace the full arc of what the eagle wings carry the people toward: Resurrection, Ascension, Pentecost, Assumption, Coronation. Pray them tonight as a meditation on what the brought-here-to-myself looks like at its completion.

• For those in the evening of life reflecting on the eagle wings that carried them - the moments of God's carrying that were not recognized until later - that the gratitude would be the posture, we pray to the Lord.
• For those who are now laborers in the harvest, that freely received freely given would be the whole of their posture, we pray to the Lord.
• In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that is moved with pity for the sheep without a shepherd, we pray to the Lord.

I bore you up on eagle wings and brought you here to myself. Name one moment in your life when you were carried - when you should not have made it through something but were borne up. Name it specifically. Give thanks for the carrying.