MONDAY, FOURTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
Hos 2: 16-18, 21-22 Ps 145: 2-9 Mt 9: 18-26
CALLED TO THE WILDERNESS
In keeping with Biblical motifs, Christian Spirituality has always used spousal imagery to describe union with God. In today’s passage from Hosea, God, the Divine bridegroom, definitively declares His plan to espouse us. The initiative is always His. He does the luring, the speaking, the purifying and the betrothing, till we can finally call Him ‘My Husband.’ ‘The wilderness’ is the place where this encounter and union takes place. This wilderness is not some spatial location but a spiritual experience and can happen anywhere. But throughout the history of Christianity, there have been some who have been called to a more intense experience of this wilderness in the form of separation from the world; an attempt to go beyond the regular Christian life; a desire to do more for Christ, to live for Him alone, to dedicate one’s whole being to Him by living in direct imitation of His withdrawal into the desert and fasting, praying and overcoming the temptations of the devil.
Along with the desert, the solitude, beauty and loftiness of the mountain has had its own attraction, invoking the loftiness of God and the baseness of man. To one such mountain of Biblical significance were allured the early Carmelites. Mount Carmel was the sacred space where the hermits faced their own inner demons, struggled and fought with them and, purified their souls. It was the place where the gospel incidents became their very own experience. Faith was tested until they could say: that even the fringe of His cloak can heal me. It was also the place of dying to one’s innate self-centredness to be brought to new life by the love of Christ. The Carmelite Order continues to bear witness to the call of the Divine bridegroom and the potential of the human person to respond to this call and be transformed by His love. God lures people even today to enter the wilderness. Can we be generous with ourselves and enter into a divine relationship with Him?
Response: The Lord is kind and full of compassion.
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