This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Collect for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that the course of our world may be directed by your peaceful rule and that your Church may rejoice, untroubled in her devotion. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
There is a small change in the English translation of this prayer that changes the meaning of God’s peaceful rule. In the Latin form of this prayer, we pray that the course of our world would be directed by God’s rule, which is peaceful to us. The way that God rules the world should give us peace.
So, how does God rule the world? We learn in Psalm 9:9, “It is he who judges the world with justice, who judges the peoples with fairness.”
It is important to know that God’s justice probably isn’t what you think. When it comes to justice, our sinfulness tells us that when someone does something wrong, they’d better get caught and get punished because they should get what’s coming to them. When that happens, we say, “Justice is served.”
However, while we may view justice with punishment, God views justice as a way to raise us up. In an Angelus address, Pope Francis said that God’s justice is often misunderstood as mere punishment when in reality it “raises us up” by “freeing us from the snares of evil.” (Jan. 8, 2023)
It also important to know that God’s justice is always accompanied by His mercy and grace. God’s mercy does not give us what we deserve, and His grace gives us what we don’t deserve.
We find God’s justice, mercy, and grace in John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish [mercy] but might have eternal life [grace]. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” - that’s His justice.
This should make the us, the Church. rejoice. We should stand so firm on the assurance of God’s justice that the prayer even says that the Church should be untroubled in her devotion.
Let’s go back to the main parts of this prayer, that course of our world may be directed by God’s rule and that the Church may rejoice.
Too often we forget that the course of our world is directed by God. We would be filled with so much more peace if we would remember that. Used here, peace is not about the absence of conflict, it is about the reconciliation between God and humanity.
God is in control. God is for you. God needs us to go out and bring that message to those around us.
Thanks for praying with me,
Julie