Gospel Reflection on Luke 6:36-38

March 17, 2025

Jesus said to his disciples: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

"Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.

Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you."

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This is, part of one of Saint Patrick's prayers in which I wanna share it with you and we'll say a few words about it. I arise today through the strength of heaven, a light from the sun, splendor of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind, depths of the sea, stability of the earth, firmness of the rock. Lovely prayer. When we think in terms of characteristics that we possess, our temptation is to think that we somehow generated these, we produced these.

So if these were some of my self descriptors, I would be thinking, well, I must be I must be so fast filled with light, and I am the rock. It's really interesting. Patrick's story about his conversion, he describes the rock, his rock experience. And he describes it by saying, I was a rock stuck in the mud of the road, and God picked me up and set me on the wall. And that's lovely imagery.

So for Patrick, his firmness of rock was not his own doing, it was completely the work of God picking him up out of the mud and making him firm as part of the wall. And I think that really captures maybe his contribution to the church that God's love shines on everyone. There are no differences. God does not have favorites. Sophia bathes all of creation, every human being on the planet with God's longing to be known and to loved.

And to the extent that we contribute to that, we should be equally generous. We live in a finite and limited world, and we tend to think people should deserve to be forgiven. They should earn being loved. They should earn being cared for. No.

God loves because that's the nature of God. Can't, God can't do otherwise. God can only pour God's life out. We look up at night at those stars in the Milky Way and realize now that I'm part of that galaxy, that enormous cascade of stars. There's 200,000,000,000 galaxies.

God is not cheap, nor should we be cheap. So if we're celebrating Saint Patrick's today and his feast day, and we celebrate how the Irish can get carried away, that's something perhaps they've been famous for. Let's hope and pray that one of the characteristics they get carried away with is they get carried away with love. They carry they get carried away by the goodness of God and get carried away and that we ought to be equally carried away in giving God's love and mercy to all.

Find more reflections here:

Weekdays Reflections 2022/25