TENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME June 8, 2008 Reflections on Hosea 6:3-6 Psalm 50:1,8,12-13, 14-15 Romans 4:18-25 Matthew 9:9-13 by Mary Benet McKinney, O.S.B.

Today’s Liturgy might well be entitled “Suggestions for embracing the art of positive thinking.” We hear about Abraham hoping against all hope even as he recognized that his body, like Sarah’s womb, was as good as dead. He was, Paul tells us, fully convinced that God was able to do what had been promised in spite of all odds.

The Gospel is equally reassuring. “I did not come to call the righteous but sinners.” Put those two concepts together; sin as being as good as dead and the promise of Jesus to be merciful and then, like Abraham, we can hope against all hope.

It is so easy to get down on ourselves. It is often difficult to believe that God works though our weaknesses and failures. It is humbling to recognize God’s desire and ability to accomplish great things in and through us when we see our failures, our weaknesses, our sinfulness. We so readily relate to the words of the first reading: “my piety is like a morning cloud, like the dew that early passes away.” And we are ashamed and disappointed in our selves. Far better to humbly acknowledge our weakness and frailty and turn to God, believing that in our weakness is God’s strength and in our vulnerability God is visible.

Hear Jesus saying: “I am with you because a physician naturally gravitates to the sick and the sick naturally seek out a physician. If you know you are spiritually sick and weak you’ve taken the first step on the way to health. I am the cure for your soul”.

We may be thinking, “How many times I’ve taken that first step.” The important thing is, of course, that we continue to humbly try again, never forgetting that Jesus is mercy for folks who have lost there way, mends folks who are broken and heals folks who are afflicted.

One of the mysteries of the Gospel tradition is the strange attraction of Jesus to the unattractive, his strange desire for the undesirable, his strange and obvious love for the unlovable. Jesus’ ministry of service is rooted in his compassion for the lost, the lonely and the broken. He loves losers, failures and those on the margin of social acceptability. And he forgives, not as a judge granting a reprieve but with the embrace of a lover.

The teaching of this day’s liturgy is filled with the hope that our God is a God of mercy, a mercy that is not a single act but the sea in which we swim. Our task is to await mercy with confidence and receive it with gratitude.

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