Daily Reading
First Reading
Baruch 4:5-12, 27-29
Take courage, my people, who perpetuate Israel’s name!
It was not for destruction that you were sold to the nations,
but you were handed over to your enemies because you angered God.
For you provoked the one who made you by sacrificing to demons and not to God.
You forgot the everlasting God, who brought you up, and you grieved Jerusalem, who reared you.
For she saw the wrath that came upon you from God, and she said:
“Listen, you neighbors of Zion, God has brought great sorrow upon me;
for I have seen the exile of my sons and daughters, which the Everlasting brought upon them.
With joy I nurtured them, but I sent them away with weeping and sorrow.
Let no one rejoice over me, a widow and bereaved of many;
I was left desolate because of the sins of my children, because they turned away from the law of God. Take courage, my children, and cry to God, for you will be remembered by the one who brought this upon you. For just as you were disposed to go astray from God, return with tenfold zeal to seek him.
For the one who brought these calamities upon you will bring you everlasting joy with your salvation.
Psalm
Psalm 69:33-35, 36-37
See, you lowly ones, and be glad; you who seek God, take heart!
For the Lord hears the poor, and does not despise those in bondage.
Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and whatever moves in them!
The Lord will deliver Zion, and will rebuild the cities of Judah;
and people shall live there and possess it;
the children of his servants will inherit it, and those who love his name will dwell in it.
Gospel Reading
Luke 10:17-24
The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”
He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning.
See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you.
Nevertheless do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
At that very hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
He turned to the disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. For I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.”
Reflection
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus calls his disciples and us “childlike”: “Although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” How so? Children don’t know how to dissemble, how to be one way and act another. “Kids say the darndest things,” because they don’t know how to hide the truth of their reactions.
In this, they are like stars or flowers or animals, things that are what they are, unambiguously. The challenge of the spiritual life is to realize what God wants us to be and thereby come to the same simplicity and directness in our existence, to find out what is in line with the deepest grain of our being.
Let me put this another way: Children haven’t yet learned how to look at themselves. Why can a child immerse himself so eagerly and thoroughly in what he is doing? Because he can lose himself; because he is not looking at himself, conscious of the reactions, expectations, and approval of those around him. The best moments in life occur when we lose the ego, lose ourselves in the world, and just are as God wants us to be.