31st Thursday of the Year (08 Nov 2018)
Homily of Fr. Paul Panaretos, S.J. during Full Spiritual Exercises
Divine Joy Creates and Draws Us
The crowd was pressing around Jesus and hearing the word of God.
Large crowds would come together to hear Jesus.
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I say to you who are hearing me: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.
Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them…
When all the people including the tax collectors (those who had been baptized with the baptism of John) heard [Jesus tell of John] they declared God just.
Whoever has ears to hear…Take care…how you hear!
Those who hear and do the word of God are my mother and my brothers and my sisters.
“This is my Son, the Chosen One; hear him!”
Those who hear & listen to you hear & listen to me
Many prophets & kings desired…to hear what you hear, but did not hear it.
Mary had seated herself at the feet of the Lord & was hearing Jesus’ teaching.
Blessed…are those who hear the word of God and do it!
The queen of the South…came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon: behold, something great-er than Solomon is here.
Jesus said, “Let the one who has ears to hear, hear!”
Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were drawing near Jesus to hear him.1
English translates a single Greek word with both hearing and listening. I have rehearsed Luke’s lines about hearing Jesus so we might feel Jesus’ presence pressing as his first hearers pressed near him, desiring converted hearts and minds, hearts and minds transformed by God.
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Ours, too, is that pressing grace: Jesus alive and present to us. It is both shared and shaped personally for each of us. These days have allowed us to exercise our prayer and experience joy before the angels of God, the joy of heaven. Both are biblese for God’s joy.
To begin to feel we are treasures of inestimable value is God’s joy for us. To begin to feel that we are sought by God who finds us on a high place alone or lost in a crevasse is God’s joy for us. To begin to feel God gently shoulders us as we are is God’s joy for us. God’s joy does not deceive. Any of us may find it unbelievable—‘God desires me?’ Yet awe before divine joy does not deceive; awe before divine joy awakens to being created each moment. Awe before divine joy is our deepest, truest hearing.
St. Ignatius helped us hear with hearts and minds. Dorothy Sayers helped people hear Jesus afresh. Her character Persona voiced Christ. Hearing her Christ-figure address us may help us keep awake to God’s joy, true and ever drawing us:
Come then, and take again your own sweet will
that once was buried in the spicy grave
With Me, and now is risen with Me, more sweet
than myrrh and cassia; come, receive again
All your desires, but better than your dreams,
All your lost loves, but lovelier than you knew,
All your fond hopes, but higher than your hearts
could dare to frame them; all your City of God
built by your faith, but nobler than you planned.
Instead of your justice, you shall have charity;
Instead of your happiness, you shall have joy;
Instead of your peace the emulous exchange of
love, and I will give you the morning star.
Rise up, My mother Mary and come away,
Rise up, My daughter Eve & My sweet son Adam,
Rise up, My city, rise up, My church, My bride!
For the time of your singing has come, and My
bright angels
Unwinter hosannas in the perpetual spring;
So enter my Father’s house…
Where the endless Now is one with the
moment’s measure,
The truth with the image, the City with the King.2
Let those who have ears to hear, hear!
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- Luke 5.1, 15; 6.17-18, 27, 47 (49); 7.29; 8.8...18, 21; 9.35; 10.16, 24, 39; 11.28, 31; 14.35; 15.1.
- Dorothy Sayers, her 1945 play, The Just Vengeance, London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd, 1959), p. 350-51
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Wiki-images: Crowds press to hear Jesus PD-US Angesl Escort the Soul of the Good Thief PD-US
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