Overview:

Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

A Reflection for Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time

“Thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thes 4:17)

Find today’s readings here.

We hear today from St. Paul that, in our living and in our dying, “Thus we shall always be with the Lord.” St. Paul seems to think that the second coming of Christ will happen in his lifetime, but two millennia later, only the most fervent among us actually expect to be raptured. (Many of us would be less surprised to be left behind in the event.) But the hope I glean from all of today’s readings is that the Holy Spirit is here, truly with us, moving among us, close at hand.

Jesus, per Luke’s Gospel, expresses this knowledge by quoting the prophet Isaiah. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” he reads from the sacred scroll. Jesus then tells his neighbors that he is the long-awaited, anointed one of God: he himself, the carpenter’s son, standing with them in the very synagogue where he grew up. Furthermore, he has his work cut out for him in fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy.  

In the footsteps of Jesus, we too must carry the conviction that the Spirit of the Lord is upon us if we are to go about the work of God in our lives. We are not the anointed one, yet we are to commit ourselves to the individual calling we discern. And even when things are not going so well, we can draw hope from the awareness that we are always with the Lord, that the Holy Spirit always dwells within us.

This holy hope pulls us up when we fall down and mends us when we feel broken. “Console one another with these words,” advises St. Paul, addressing the sorrow for “those who have fallen asleep.” We do just that when we come together to bury a loved one. Our faith assures us that the person whose death we mourn lives on with God. But our soul’s comfort often comes from our community, from those who believe and grieve with us in the presence of the Holy Spirit. 

I admit to ignoring the part of Luke’s story where the locals try to hurl Jesus from a cliff for his impudence. Prophets, says Jesus, are never accepted in their own native place. We too may be shunned or rejected in smaller ways when we live and work in the Spirit. But do not fear: Hope is bigger. Hope is the Holy Spirit’s gift to us. Hope is the word for today.

Valerie Schultz is a freelance writer, a columnist for The Bakersfield Californian and the author of Till the Moon Be No More: The Grit and Grace of Growing Older. She lives on the Oregon Coast.