Darkness and Light.

Despite God’s disavowal of “affliction” in the entrance antiphon and the “sweet taste” of God’s promises in the psalm, there is distress and bitterness in today’s Scriptures too. The Gospel shows God’s righteousness embodied in an angry Jesus, while self-righteous power holders plot his death. Later, in Revelation, John is—absurdly—expected to eat a scroll whose sweetness will turn to bile, whereupon he must risk his life prophesying to hostile people. Dark readings indeed.

But there is light. In the Gospel, while the Jerusalem elite are driven from the temple area, the “nobodies” hang on Jesus’ every word. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, John, though exiled on Patmos, listens intently to the divine heavenly voice, and that message is ultimately one of a hope-filled, post-disaster future.

Light and dark, promise and paradox: these reading bring to mind lines from Francis Thompson’s The Hound of Heaven. The poet, seminarian, opium addict, homeless derelict, and mystic bares his soul, acknowledging that his life has been a flight from God. He touches the paradox in his own life: while his drugged ecstasy was already terminal, his actual death promised to be even worse. He asks himself, “The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?” But God, “the hound of heaven” and “tremendous lover” who only wants his wellbeing, catches and embraces him with tender words: “Arise, clasp my hand, and come.”

God asks for our faithfulness, even in dark times when our stomach sours. God always remains a faithful promise-keeper.

Fr. Anthony J. Gittins. Taken from Give Us This Day.

Fr. Anthony J. Gittins, CSSp, is emeritus professor of theology and culture at Catholic Theological Union, Chicago. His most recent book is Courage and Conviction: Unpretentious Christianity (Liturgical Press).