A Reflection for Saturday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
Find today’s readings here.
You don’t need to have recently written a book about growing older (hint) to appreciate the book of Sirach, but its words of wisdom resonate more deeply in your bones if you have grown older. In fact, your thinning, creaking bones—those reliable indicators of your aging—totally get Sirach.
Today’s first reading celebrates the cycle of life. In describing our creation, it details the physical, mental, and spiritual gifts that God has included in our makeup. I’m especially fond of the mention of “an inventive heart.” Sirach writes how God the Creator teaches us about good and evil, expects the best of us, and notes our every deed. In return for this “everlasting covenant,” we are to praise God’s name and to try to live up to divine expectations all through our “limited days of life.”
Ah, the limits. We often start to think more seriously about God’s expectations for us when there are more days behind us than ahead. When our children are grown and our careers are over, when the realities of aging are visible and persistent, we contemplate the next chapter. We take stock: What good have we done on God’s behalf? Have we kept the faith? Have we fought the good fight? What is our legacy?
If we are parents, we count our children as our legacy, which brings us to today’s Gospel from Mark. Jesus is bothered when the disciples block people’s children from approaching him. Reportedly at the time of Jesus, children were hardly coddled little darlings, so when Jesus insists on praising their innocent qualities and noticing them at all, let alone taking the time to embrace and bless them, his disciples are confounded. Today we do coddle our little darlings. We older folks consider our children and grandchildren to be the best of us. They are our bequest to the world, the holy seeds we plant, the beloved gifts we offer to a future we will not see. “The Kingdom of God belongs to such as these,” says Jesus, and we agree.
“Man’s days are like those of grass,” prays the Psalmist, a further reminder of our mortality. We are a fragile bloom; we are dust, and we know it. For now, though, we are here. We are the wrinkled face of God’s kindness and compassion; we are the weathered hands of God’s justice and mercy. May our inventive hearts linger today on our brief lovely fling with the earth, even as our thoughts dwell on our eternal union of love with God.
