A Reflection for the readings from the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
I’m taking a risk, going out on a vulnerable limb here. I want to talk about the wound of not feeling loved. If you’re like me, perhaps you’ve experienced this painful feeling at times in your life…thinking that you must try so hard to be liked, to need to perform in order to be worthy of love, or just feeling unlovable. An agonizing ache that sometimes seems impossible to shake.
This is not the common thread I see tying the readings together of this Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. However, as I see it, this Sunday’s readings do have in common a simple remedy for the confusing lie that I am not loved.
The first reading from the book of Sirach affirms that the Lord “hears the cry of the oppressed.” Like an orphan or widow who pours out lament to God, He willingly hears them. In fact, our cry is so important to God that He allows it to be so persistent that our petitions “reach the heavens,” that our prayers “pierce the clouds.” Our cries are so important to God that they do not relent until they “reach their goal”--the Heart of the Father. And He responds and affirms without delay.
In similar fashion, responsorial Psalm 34 sings, “The Lord hears the cry of the poor,” that “when the just cry out, the Lord hears them, and from all their distress he rescues them.” If “his praise shall be ever in my mouth,” is there any room for doubt that the Lord would longingly desire to hear my cries and draw close to me, especially when I am feeling “crushed” and “brokenhearted?”
St. Paul had lots of reasons to make him feel not loved, for example, because everyone deserted him at his first defense. No one appeared on his behalf. “But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength,” he admits, confident that the Lord would rescue him from every evil and keep him safe for Heaven.
When we cry out to God, it is an act of true humility, littleness. God certainly hears these prayers of His children--of His beloved sons and daughters. In Luke’s Gospel, it was the tax collector’s littleness and humility that won the favor of God. In his humility, he saw himself as he was--a sinner. True humility is seeing myself in truth--who I really am before God. I am little, broken, crushed. But this weakness is actually my strength, because my humility, littleness and recognition of myself as a sinner moves the heart of the Father. His love and mercy are roused. It is impossible for God to ever stop loving me.
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