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Deacon Tom Writes ©
“God be in my head”
The gospel
for today sets the stage for Jesus’ death. The parable of the wicked tenants who kill the servants sent
by the owner of the vineyard to collect the rent and then kill the landowner’s
son who was also sent by the owner foreshadow the events that will claim Jesus’
life. Jesus tells the crowd that God’s plans will not be stifled by those of
man. His being rejected by the Jewish authorities allows a furthering of God’s
Kingdom. For… “The stone rejected by the
builders will become the cornerstone”. God’s plan of salvation is
mysteriously broadened so that others may join in the task of bringing about
that bountiful harvest the Kingdom of God will produce.
Jesus showed
us by word and example how to live in the Kingdom of God. To follow Him we must
think and act like He did. That is
the way by which we become productive members of His Kingdom. A question we
might ask ourselves is, “How do we know if we are bearing fruit for the
kingdom”? One way is to set aside
a few minutes at the end of the day and review the events from a spiritual
perspective. This is one of
the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius. It goes like this:
1) Give thanks
to God for all that we have.
2) Ask God for
the grace to know our sins and to avoid them in the future.
3) Reflect on
the events of the day to see where we served God or where we have neglected
Him.
4) Ask God to
pardon our faults.
5) Ask God for
the grace to be more like Him.
If we do this exercise on a regular
basis, we are sure to grow spiritually and that growth will produce a harvest
worthy of the kingdom.
As we grow in the love of God, we are
able to surrender our thoughts and desires to Him and allow Him to fill us with
His thoughts and desires. The prayer below goes back to the late 1400s to early
1500s and it calls to mind our need to surrender ourselves entirely so that his
thoughts may become ours.
God be in my
head and in my understanding;
God be in my
eyes and in my looking;
God be in my
mouth and in my speaking;
God be in
my heart and in my thinking;
God be at my
end and at my departing.
Amen
These words, with some alteration, are
from the Sarum Primer
of 1514, which was a book of prayers and Christian worship resources in the
Roman Catholic Church that was collected by the clergy at Salisbury Cathedral
in the south central part of England. It was published in 1514 in the “Book of
Hours” (Cambridge) and republished as the “Sarum Primer” in Salisbury in 1558.
(“Sarum” is the abbreviation for Sarisburium, the Latin word for Salisbury,
which was and is both a city and a diocese in England.) 1
May God open
our minds and hearts so that we can do our part in bringing forth the His
Kingdom.
Enjoy the
day!
Tom
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