Day 25, Saturday, 13 March ‘This love of yours is like a morning cloud’

 

RETREAT IN LENT 2021

Day 25, Saturday, 13 March 

‘This love of yours is like a morning cloud’

A constant theme for us in our daily life is to move from functioning to depth, or, as Cardinal Newman put it, from the ‘notional’ to the ‘real’. In other words, despite all our best efforts, we spend a lot of energy on just ‘managing’ our lives so that we present ourselves as we would want to be seen by others but not necessarily as we really are! We want to ‘survive’ this meeting or cope with this interview.

We have Hosea again today, this time (5:15-6:6) tell us that Israel’s love was ‘like a morning cloud’. It is there this moment and gone the next. There is nothing solid or permanent in this kind of love; ‘it is like the dew that quickly disappears’.

The story of the Pharisee (Luke 18:9-14) who goes to the temple to tell God what a great person he is, is like a comedy. His obvious pretence is laughable.  But if Jesus is telling a joke, he is also making a point. This is the, maybe unconscious, attitude of people ‘who think themselves to be virtuous and despise everyone else’. In some of his public utterances the last president of the United States projected this sort of image of himself. He was high profile but we know the attitude is common to many of us and in one way or another touches us all. The parable, ridiculous as it may seem, gets close to the bone.

We also note, of course, the tax collector, who comes from a ‘despised’ group of ‘sell-outs’. It shocked Jesus’ hearers that he is the one praised for his honesty. He knew he was compromising; he knew he was in a crooked profession. But he admitted it and was clearly looking for a way out; ‘Be merciful to me, a sinner!’ Jesus is upsetting prevalent attitudes. Sr Janice McLaughlin, who put herself ‘on the frontline’ in supporting Zimbabwe’s war of liberation in the 1970s and who died this week, used to like the Shona word for God Chipindikure, the one who turns things upside down, was also willing to do this. Calling people to ‘get real’!