reflection -- 30 July 2024 -- psalm 79

The readings at Mass this AM included some of psalm 79.  The psalmist, praying to God says:

Let the prisoners' sighing come before you;
with your great power free those doomed to death.
Then we, your people and the sheep of your pasture,
will give thanks to you forever;
through all generations we will declare your praise.

It is good to remember that we are all born, even conceived, in the grip of the devil.  Psalm 51 prays:

Behold, I was born in guilt, 
in sin my mother conceived me.

So, in Ps 79, all of us are the "prisoners sighing before you."  and as a consequence of the sin of Adam, we are all doomed to die.

And God comes to us in the Person of Jesus, and rising from the dead on Easter, by his great power, frees us.

And we, the sheep of His flock, give thanks to Him forever.  The great cloud of witnesses in heaven sing his praises Eternally, and we who are working out our salvation with fear and trembling offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving every day at Mass.

Reflection -- 28 July 2024, "They shall eat and there shall be some left over."

The 1st reading from Mass this morning is taken from the 2nd Book of Kings:

Elisha said, "Give it to the people to eat."  But his servant objected,  "How can I set this before a hundred people?"  Elisha insisted, "Give it to the people to eat."  "For thus says the LORD, 'They shall eat and there shall be some left over.'"

And when they had eaten, there was some left over, as the LORD had said.

This prophesy by Elisha the prophet is fulfilled in this passage, but is fulfilled more completely in the Gospel reading from St John:

When they had had their fill, he (Jesus) said to his disciples, "Gather the fragments left over, so that nothing will be wasted."

So they collected them, and filled twelve wicker baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves that had been more than they could eat.

Reflection -- 10 July 2024 "Cover Us" and "Fall Upon Us"

 Today's ( 10 July 24 ) 1st reading Reading from Mass includes:

The king of Samaria shall disappear,

like foam upon the waters.

The high places of Aven shall be destroyed,

the sin of Israel;

thorns and thistles shall overgrow their altars.

Then they shall cry out to the mountains, “Cover us!”

and to the hills, “Fall upon us!”

In the 8th Station of the Way of the Cross, Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, St Luke's Gospel (Luke 23:27 ) presents:

A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him.  Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’

At that time people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?”

St. Irenaeus, who died around the year 200 AD, tells us that scripture is recapitulated in Christ.  We can see that occurring for this passage from the book of the prophet Hosea in The 8th Station of the Cross.