Habakkuk
1: 2-3; 2:24 Sr. Carol Dvorak
2
Timothy 1: 6-8; 13-14
Luke
17: 5-10
Looking at all three readings
for today’s Eucharist, it’s pretty evident that the theme is faith! As I
read and pondered these readings, two things jumped out at me. One was
the Gospel’s mustard seed parable. Did you ever think of Jesus as
represented by a mustard seed? St. Ambrose wrote a beautiful passage
asking if “we would know Christ the seed and Christ the sown?
He is the
grain of mustard seed because he sets fire to the human heart.” I had to
think about this a bit, why would a mustard seed set fire to a human
heart? And then it clicked! If you take a bit of mustard to taste,
all by itself, it can seem a bit like fire in the mouth, can’t it?
Ambrose goes on to say that “Christ is the grain of mustard seed, in that the
narrative of the Lord’s passion is most bitter, (also like mustard) and most
grievous; most bitter unto tears and grievous unto compunction. And so
when we hear and when we read that the Lord fasted, the Lord thirsted, the Lord
wept and the Lord cried out, we, (in faith and imitation of Christ), justly
moderate the more agreeable delights of our body’s pleasures. Whoever
sows the grain of mustard seed sows the Kingdom of heaven.” For me our
Friday fast days help us to participate in this moderation of our body’s pleasures
in union with Our Lord’s passion.
Now the second phrase that
caught my attention was in the letter to Timothy where Paul says, “Beloved, I
remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have.” I relate this
to Ambrose’s “Christ, the mustard seed who sets fire to the human heart.”
And I also relate it to John of Cross’ imagery of the living flame of
love. (The following thoughts come from Martin Laird’s second book
on prayer called A Sunlit Absence, Silence, Awareness and Contemplation.)
He says that as we advance in the spiritual life “we become acutely aware of
just how filled we are with arrogance, envy, preoccupation with our reputation
and judgmentalism. Indeed these characteristics were all there within us,
but we were at most only vaguely aware of them; now the living flame of love is
drawing them out and placing them in our sight. The problem is that this
stage of growth in humbling self-knowledge is singularly painful, with the
result that we feel we are falling to pieces when in fact, we are becoming one
with the living flame of love.” And this in my view is where faith comes
in. We must believe in an all loving and merciful God must trust that
this is part of a process for our healing. We must believe that the flame
remains loving and is only working for our good. And so I encourage all
of us, in faith, to follow Paul’s injunction to stir into flame the gift of God
that we have received, this compassionate, purifying, living flame of love in
imitation of Jesus, the mustard seed, who sets fire to the human heart.
And this fire, who is Jesus, leads us to fasting and tears so that we too may
sow the Kingdom of heaven.
I think we had a beautiful
icon of how God loves his children when M. Rebecca’s sister Mary and baby Aimee
were here recently. Each one of us who visited with them loved that
baby! It was so evident as Aimee was passed around to each sister to hold
and even to feed! I loved Aimee too even though she cried when it was my
turn to hold her! So remember this icon if you are ever tempted to doubt
God’s love for you, even when the living flame of this love is purifying and
leads to humbling self-knowledge, for this flame sets fire to the human heart.
Sr. Carol Dvorak
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