7/14/2011 – Thursday of 15th week of Ordinary time – Exodus 3:13-20, Psalm 105 – Bless Kateri Tekakwitha –

     “The Lord remembers his covenant forever.”  So declares our psalmist this afternoon.  Yet, we hear this knowing the complexity of the relationship that God had with the people of Israel.  How that relationship could be so rocky at times.  How the people of Israel would often openly rebel or turn their backs on the Lord.  Yet, we hear Moses receive the call from God in our reading from Exodus, as God calls Moses to lead his people.  God speaks to Moses through the flames of the burning bush.  For us, flames are symbolic not only of God’s divine presence, but also of the power of the Holy Spirit who is with us in the world today to guide us & lead us.

         Moses may have been a very unlikely leader for the people of Israel.  Yet, in the midst of the covenant relationship that God has with his chosen people, we celebrate today the memorial of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a young native American woman who survived so much & who took so many risks to follow the faith. She was born to the chief of the Mohawk tribe, yet she was struck ill & disfigured from a smallpox epidemic that killed most of her family.  Blessed Kateri had to flee from her uncle’s household in order to practice the Catholic faith that was the guiding light in her life.  Although she was born after the death of Jean de Brebeuf & the other Jesuit North American martyrs in the mid-17^th century, the light of the faith that they brought to the Americas found root in Blessed Kateri & other native people.  She died at the young age of 24 more than 3 centuries ago, yet her faith remains a witness to us today, reflected in her beatification by Pope John Paul II in 1980.

         When times are difficult, when we struggle through life, perhaps it is difficult for us to remember that God keeps his covenant with us, that he keeps his covenant with his people.  May we honor & give thanks to God for the blessings he has given us in our lives, even in the midst of the struggles we must endure.