Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time
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Today's Readings
Is 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-8; Rom 11:33-36; Mt 16:13-20
Read today's readings at USCCBReflection
Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
Paul breaks into doxology at the end of his most intricate theological argument - three chapters of working through Israel and the Gentiles and mercy and disobedience and the irrevocable gifts. He has been as precise as he can be, and at the end of the precision he can only say: from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever.
The evening of a long life teaches this doxology by a different route. The inscrutable judgments, the unsearchable ways - the things that did not go as planned, the losses that made no sense, the mercies that arrived sideways, the prayers answered in forms that were nothing like what was asked for. Looking back, the depth of the riches is visible in ways it was not visible from inside the journey.
Jesus asks: but who do you say I am? At the end of a long life, the answer to this question is not the same as it was at the beginning. It has been tested and complicated and refined. It is more earned. Peter's answer came from revelation, not reasoning - but the revelation builds through the long walk, through the storm on the water and the cock crowing and the fire on the beach afterward.
A peg in a sure spot. The psalm says: on the day I called you answered me; though I walk in the midst of distress you preserve my life. The peg holds through the distress. That is what makes it a peg.
Prayer of the Faithful
- For those working out their answer to Jesus's second question at the end of a long life, that the answer would be deeper and more earned than it was at the beginning, we pray to the Lord.
- For those whose faith has been tested by the inscrutable judgment - the loss that made no sense, the prayer that was not answered in the expected form - that Paul's doxology would be available to them tonight, we pray to the Lord.
- For the Church built on the rock, that the gates of the netherworld would not prevail against it, we pray to the Lord.
Something to Do
Pray Paul's doxology slowly tonight: Oh the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! For from him and through him and for him are all things. To him be glory forever.
Say it over the thing in your life that is most inscrutable right now. Let the doxology be the honest response.
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