Encountering, enchanting, empowering
22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time
Jer 20: 7-9; Rom 12:1-2; Mt 16: 21-27
Our trust and our belief is not in a power or in a principle which is called God, but in a person... in three persons...who reveal themselves to us. In acknowledging that revelation and accepting it, we grow in a relationship called faith. The readings today present to us the way God relates to us.
Encountering God
We have an encountering God...a God who meets us on our everyday journey, intercepts our daily routine, and comes up with questions and proposals that demand our utmost attention. Not just questions that take an answer, but questions that lead to life choices, radical commitments and fundamental stands.
Enchanting God
In this encounter and in the ways that God reveals Godself to us, God is ever enchanting. Sometimes when God encounters we are so mesmerised, enticed and gripped by the experience that we make decisions, make choices which otherwise we would not have made at all. God overpowers us, complains Jeremiah today. Yes, God overpowers us with love, with God's love.
Empowering God
It is when we come out of that mesmerised state, we realise what we have done...that we have fallen for God, fallen in love with that wonderful person and given our word for so many things that are so difficult in our world today: a world with such warped, strange, queer and sometimes nauseating principles, policies and priorities. A prolonged commitment seems an impossibility, a tough enroute to happiness seems an impracticality, selfless love and sensitive hearts seem an unavailable commodity. But God empowers... God empowers us with encouragements and at the same time corrections, as we see in Jesus' conversation with Peter. It is only through God's empowering love that we can know, choose and hold on to what is Good, what is acceptable and what is perfect.
