8/7/2014 – Thursday of 18th week in Ordinary Time – Psalm 51

       “Create a clean heart in me, O God.”  I find it really interesting that the psalmist does not say purify my heart or cleanse my heart, but rather “create” in me a clean heart.  The psalmist emphasizes God’s creative action, the new life and the new creation that we become through God.  The psalmist goes on to say – “A steadfast spirit renew within me.”   In asking for a new spirit and a new heart, the psalmist asks to renew the presence of both the human and the divine within him, to renew that which is depraved and broken and disordered within him.  In the light of today’s psalm, we can ask ourselves:

What energy do I feel flowing through me?

Where is the energy of God that is guiding me on my journey?

What is the Spirit that I feel God entrusting in me?

How am I helping God create a new within me?

8/8/2013 – St Dominic – Thursday of 18th week in Ordinary Time – Psalm 95

       If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.  The people of Israel hardened their hearts and turned their backs on God, even though he had made a pact with God and made them his people.  Rather than singing joyfully to the Lord like the psalmist suggests, the people of Israel complained often and turned to other idols. 

         The saint today, St Dominic, was born in the late 12^th century in northern Spain. He founded the Order of Preachers, known today as the Dominicans.  Dominic saw that in his era many of the faithful had become complacent and had turned away from God and their faith.  This is so similar to what we see happening today, isn’t it?  Dominic wanted his order to bring people alive in their faith through their preaching of the Gospel.  The popularity of the rosary to this day can be traced back to Dominic and the way he encouraged the faithful to pray the rosary and to pray for the prayers and intercession of our Blessed Mother.

         If we are to open our hearts to God rather than harden them, we must have authentic conversion and renewal in our lives, we much place our trust in God and allow God’s graces to work in our lives.  God word must live in our hearts, but most importantly, He must live in our own words and in our actions. 

8/9/2012 – Thursday of 18th week of ordinary time – St Edith Stein – Jeremiah 31:31-34, Psalm 51:12-15, 18-19

        We hear a lot about hearts in today’s readings.  The psalmist asks the Lord to create a clean heart in him, to renew a steadfast spirit within him.  As I we heard about the shooting in Wisconsin over the weekend in which worshippers were killed at a Sikh temple, we saw images of the shooter as a young boy growing up here in the United States and as a young man serving in the military, then as an adult associated with white supremacist organizations, as a man wanting to kill people gathering in their house of worship.  We wonder what would turn a heart to do something like that. From time to time, we all might ask the Lord to cleanse our hearts, to create a new spirit within us that would devote our hearts only to him.

         Then we hear the prophet Jeremiah talking about a new covenant that the Lord will make with his people, one that is written on the hearts of the people.  I think if we search our hearts, we hopefully will find messages from God written there.  I think there is something innate within us that draws us to God, that desires a relationship and a covenant with him. 

         We have many saints that we celebrate who were members of the Carmelite religious order.  We think of St Teresa of Avila, St Therese of Lisieux, St John of the Cross, and St Teresa of the Andes.  Today we celebrate another great Carmelite saint – St Edith Stein.  She was born in part of the German empire in the late 19^th century to an observant Jewish family.  She earned a PhD in philosophy.  Her study of the writings of St Teresa of Avila drew her to Catholicism.  After her conversion and baptism, she became a Carmelite nun, taking the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.  She was transferred to a convent in the Netherlands during WWII, where she was thought to be safe, but a statement read in Catholic parishes in the Netherlands in 1942 condemning the Nazis brought about the imprisonment of Jewish converts to Catholicism in that country.  She died in Aushwitz at the age of 50 in 1942. 

         We look into the human heart at the grace of God that can be at work in our hearts, but we also see a lot of violence and destruction that can come out of our human heart as well.  We see the horror of WWII, the shootings at a temple or a movie theater, and we wonder how a human heart can do such things.  We need hearts that are focused on God and what he teaches us.  That is what we need.