The Lord of History by Jean Danielou

Monastic Lectionary of the Divine Office, 

      

THIRTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

The Lord of History www.answersaboutfaith.com  

THURSDAY 26/10/2015

First Reading

Jeremiah 27:1-15

          Responsory Is 55:8-9; fer 27:5

My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. +As the heavens are high above the earth, so are my ways high above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.

V. It is I who by my great power and outstretched arm made the earth, with the people and animals that are on the earth, and I can give it to whomever I please. + As the heavens ...

Second Reading     From The Lord of History by Jean Danielou

If a missionary is to testify before the world concerning the mind of God, he must first enter into that mind himself, he must be led by the Holy Spirit into the depths in God's nature, he must contemplate with awe the scale and boldness of the divine plan. The soul of the Blessed Virgin was enlightened at the time of her visitation by such a spiritual vision of the ways of providence, so that she cried out, in the Magnificat, My soul magnifies the Lord ... because he who is mighty ... has wrought ... wonders. "Magnify" means to recognize the greatness of God's works, to stand amazed at the magnificence of his operations. Generally, people fail to see these things, being blinded by the spectacle of earthly grandeur, and unaware of the glory of God. They are readily moved to admiration of temporal achieve­ments: the power of the great nations opposing one another in our time, or the dynamic influence of the human mind evinced by such as Nietzsche, or Marx, fills them with astonishment, even while they forget the immeasurable might of God's activity.

What the Holy Ghost does for the apostle is to raise up his understanding from the plane of human activity to the level of the divine working. For, indeed, as the Lord said to Isaiah, he does not think as you think, deal as you deal. Men and women have their own ideas, but these are not God's; they would like to organize the world in a certain fashion, but this is not God's fashioning; they pursue a goal which is not God. There is some relationship between these two distinct worlds, but it is not one of identity. The apostle is a person whom the Holy Spirit has taken up into the ways of God, and whom he will help to cooperate in them, making him instrumental in their fulfilment, as we may see in the case of the prophets throughout the ages of Old Testament history.

Today the Holy Spirit still affords us the same religious understanding of the historical process, the same spiritual insight into the realities of our own time. Thus when we look at contemporary events we may see further than the children of this world, who perceive only the outward husk of things; we need not explain everything in terms of the conflicting material interests of classes and nations. Behind the scenes, another conflict is engaged, between Christ and the powers of evil, for the possession of nations and of souls. It is only the Spirit of God that enables us to transcend the limitations of human insight, and to read the unanswerable riddle of our times.

Responsorv Eph 6:10-12

Be strong in the Lord, with the strength of his power. + Put on the full armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles

of the devil.

V. Our struggle is not against human adversaries, but against cosmic powers, against the rulers and governors of this dark age, against the superhuman forces of evil in the heavenly realms. + Put on ...