The WORD in LENT - Third week, Thursday
March 16, 2023: Jeremiah 7: 23-28; Luke 11: 14-23
One of the prominent dangers that we run into in our day to day life is, taking the goodness of the Lord for granted. The Mercy of the Lord is endless and immeasurable. Yet there is every chance that I may deprive myself of this boundless mercy - yes, it is I who deprives myself of it! The first step towards that is refusing to listen! Yes, it is true... not just incapacity to listen, but refusing to listen!
Every one of us is made capable of listening to the Lord and we are offered innumerable opportunities to listen, in fact we need not make any exaggerated effort to listen! Remaining calm, recollecting within, staying still is enough for us to listen to the Word, listen to what the Lord wants to communicated and reveal. But the problem begins when we make ourselves incapable of it, by our choices and priorities.
In these priorities and choices, we relegate the aspect of listening to the Lord, to such a despicable position that we go far far away from God and we wish to establish our own existence, independent of God. The fact is that we cannot go too far, for wherever we go, the Lord is with us. Yet, we take that presence, that love and that mercy for granted. Such a painful experience of rejection, that we give the Lord. Is this not what the Lord shared already through Hosea (in chapter 11), 'the more I called them, the more they went from me'; 'my people are bent on turning away from me'...what an expression of pain from the Lord!
Precisely this fact, that God has made us for a life of union with the Lord, makes me lose my peace of mind or peace in the world, when we drift away from God and from God's voice. The call is simple but challenging - don't harden you hearts and your ears, listen and change, and through that you would have worked on your part of the Reign - that you yould have done your lot for peace.
Peace is listening - listening to the voice of the Lord who instructs us, listening to the cries of those around who give us the opportunity to live the mercy we have received from God, listening to everything that is happening around me to know what is expected of me here and now... listening leads to peace!