Thursday of the Thirty-First Week in Ordinary Time

Other saints: Bl Frances d'Amboise (1427-1485); SS Zechariah and Elizabeth (First Century); Saint Bertilla (c. 705); Bd Gomidas Keumurgian (c. 1656-1707); Bd Bernard Lichtenberg (1875-1943)

Readings of the Day

RB: Ch 29 Readmission of Those Who Leave the Monastery

Mass: Ph 3:3-8a; Resp Ps 105; Lk 15:1-10

Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord.

LAMB OF GOD, WHO TAKES AWAY THE SINS OF THE WORLD,

HAVE MERCY ON US, O LORD.

I remember including a quotation about the woman and her lost coin (Lk 15:8-10) from a sermon of Johannes Tauler (1300-1361), one of the Rhineland mystics, in my doctoral thesis. I used it to comment on the two-fold search of our search for God and His search for us. Tauler preached this: "The woman turns her house upside down, searching for the coin. How does this search happen within us? One way is active, in which we are seeking; the other is passive, in which we are sought ... The kingdom of God is within you. As soon as we enter our house to search for God there, God in His turn searches for us, and the house is turned upside down." God "acts just the way we do when we search for something: throwing aside one thing after another, until we find what we are looking for." Thanks be to God. 

May we join the woman in today's Gospel who proclaimed: "Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost." In just the same way, I tell you, says the Lord, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Lk 15:10). And Basil Hume encourages us as he did his monks at a Solemn Monastic Profession in 1964, for everyday is a new beginning in one way or another: 

You are now beginning in earnest the lifelong task of searching for God ... as from tomorrow, you will commit yourselves to seek Him, seek Him above all, before all, Him alone. And that search will go on day after day, month after month, year after year; never relenting, never becoming half-hearted, and never, above all, discouraged.

(Basil Hume, 1964, in Cardinal Basil Hume: A Pilgrim's Search for God, p. 33)

© Gertrude Feick 2020