Reflection for Wednesday, Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Today's Word

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

Exodus: 3:3 "Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up."


Today's Reflection

The account of Moses’ call by God in the first reading is one of the key texts in the Jewish Scriptures.

Moses’ encounter with God at the burning bush would transform him from a humble shepherd to the great liberator who delivered the people of Israel from the slavery of Egypt.

This profound spiritual experience was as significant for Moses as Paul’s encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus was significant for him.

In that highly charged moment, according to our first reading, Moses heard God call on him to take off his shoes, ‘for the place on which you stand is holy ground’.

Every prayerful encounter between ourselves and the Lord generates holy ground. In the gospel reading we are given an insight into a moment of Jesus’ prayerful encounter with God.

He thanks God that it is ‘mere children’ who are receiving his revelation of God the Father.

It is not the ‘learned and the clever’, the experts in the Jewish Law, who are receiving this revelation, but those considered to be uneducated in the ways of God, such as sinners, tax collectors, people from all walks of life who do not keep the details of the Jewish Law.

Jesus says that we need to ‘become like children’ if we are to enter the kingdom of God.

We need a humble openness to God’s presence, such as Moses showed while shepherding his sheep.

Prayer is a moment when we come before the Lord in humility and poverty, conscious that we have nothing to offer that God needs but that we need everything that God has to offer.


Resolution

Let's resolve to pray knowing that whenever in prayer we come before the Lord in such poverty of spirit, we are truly on holy ground and on that holy ground the Lord will speak to us as he spoke to Moses.

Good Morning

God bless you

St. Joseph pray for us