“Merciful and gracious is the LORD, slow to anger and abounding in kindness. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him.” (Psalm 103: 8, 11)
Our readings from this week all declare the abounding mercy of God! The LORD called Moses to lead His people out of Egypt because He saw the cruelty and suffering they endured. Merciful and loving, GOD keeps His promise and sends them Moses, a precursor to the CHRIST, to lead them out through the waters, to a new life. (Sounds sort of like our Baptism, doesn’t it?)
In Psalm 103, we are told that God’s kindness and mercy are so far above us that we could never fathom it. Trust is needed to contemplate and believe that He will be gracious. But just in case we didn’t quite get it, Jesus Himself tells us in the Gospel that we will not be forsaken or cut down… the gardener will work on us, cultivate the seeds of our faith, which He has generously planted in our souls, so we may yield good fruit. Then we may grow and thrive! He even sent His Spirit to be with us for all time to make sure the job is done.
But what is to become of us if that doesn’t happen? What do we do with the graces that God so lavishly plants in our souls? The owner of the tree wanted to destroy it because it bore no fruit. I have heard it said, if you want to know what kind of tree it is, bump into it and see what falls. What kind of fruit falls when someone bumps, or hurts, or ridicules us? When we follow the way of Jesus, proclaimed in the Gospel, we learn how to behave, how to respond, how to bear good fruit. That is what we do with our graces, help them grow by feeding them the Word of God.
The Jews in Egypt were not silent, they called out to the LORD, they remembered His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They did not forget God. They did their part. God will not force us, He gently calls and waits for an answer. He carefully plants and waits for growth. With a grateful heart and hopeful spirit, let us abundantly live in the words Jesus speaks to us, the lessons he teaches, so that His gratuitous kindness and mercy are met with our diminutive effort, to create a thriving garden with multitudes of plants and trees bearing delicious fruit…His Kingdom Come, His will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven.