To proclaim the Lord’s favor ….

Reflection for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Near the entrance to the church is “the prayer board.”  Near the board are pieces of paper on which individuals can write intentions and post them. Most of those leaving a prayer on the board provide few details — most simply offer a name and the majority of concerns are medical.

But one morning, when the parish priest collected the days’ petitions for Morning Prayer, he said that the intentions “bolted through me like electric current.”

One of the prayers was scribbled by a homeless person: I’ll be out begging tonight, Lord. Keep me safe.

Another wrote: I miss my husband. I don’t know how I’m going to live without him.

Then the parish priest’s eyes landed on this: For the baby I aborted: I love you despite never meeting you. I hope you’re with me until I have the chance to explain why the timing wasn’t right in person. Until then, I must let go. xxx.”

The priest remembers:

“I choked. I don’t know if I’ve ever read a more heartfelt or heart-breaking prayer. I was humbled, moved, brought to my knees. Morning Prayer had become mourning prayer. This child of God was wrestling with powerful feelings, memories, wonderings, and she had brought all this into the divine presence. She had asked those of us gathered to place these poignant realities on the altar of God’s grace and mercy. And, embraced by the miracle of God’s story, she was pleading with the Holy Spirit to make something good of it all — maybe not straightaway or even soon: but in God’s good time.

“My colleague noted my silence and asked what was up, so I handed him the prayer. ‘Reminds me why we do what we do,’ he said.”

This is what each one of us is called to do: to make Isaiah’s vision a reality in every simple and unremarkable kindness we offer, prompted by God’s grace that brings a sense of peace and healing, forgiveness and hope to a soul in crisis.  As witnesses of Christ’s resurrection, as baptized disciples of his church, we inherit the Spirit’s call to “bring glad tidings” and “proclaim the Lord’s favour” to the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, the oppressed and the helpless. The work that God “sends” Jesus and all of us to do is hard and demanding, filled with disappointment and heartache, requiring us to put aside our own needs and dreams for the sake of realizing the kingdom of God here and now. Whatever gifts and graces we possess can work great and wondrous things when done in the Spirit of God — even a simple prayer offered for another struggling soul.