Basic HTML Version
Thursday
OF
THE
E
IGHTH
W
EEK
IN
O
RDINARY
T
IME
Zephaniah 3:14-18a
Isaiah 12:2-3,4bcd, 5-6
Luke 1:39-56
S
UMMARY
The Gospel of Luke here is so beautiful and resonates deeply within our
Catholic Tradition. The Divine and Holy moment when the infant Elizabeth
is carrying, leaps upon hearing the voice of Mary forms for me a layering of
joy on many levels. Mary˅s humble response and referring to herself as a
lowly servant, stands in stark contrast to yesterday˅s Gospel when the
apostles were primarily concerned with their own lofty status in the king-
dom. The weaving together of the Old Testament of Zephaniah today with
Luke˅s visitation story is nearly seamless and reinforces for me goodness
of our Lord. As proclaimed in the Old Testament,
ˈThe LORD, your God, is in your midst,
a mighty savior;
He will rejoice over you with gladness,
and renew you in his love,
He will sing joyfully because of you,
as one sings at festivals.ˉ
And in Luke˅s Gospel:
For at the moment the sound of your greeting
reached my ears,
the infant in my womb leaped for joy.
Blessed are you who believed
that what was spoken to you by the Lord
would be fulfilled.
R
EFLECTION
This past weekend we were blessed to have our nearly 4 year old grand-
niece for over for an extended visit. One day we took a trip to the beach
and her joy was palatable and easily helped ease my stress over finding
parking, getting sunburned and hiking up 500 (or so it seemed) steps. This