Listen: “My heart and flesh cry out for the living God” (Psalm 84: 2).

November 28: Friday of Week 34 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Revelation 20:1-4, 11 to 21:2; Psalm 84:3, 4, 5-6, 8; Luke 21:29-33

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.

Thoughts to help us take responsibility as stewards of the kingship of Christ.

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life ... Step Five )

Listen

“My heart and flesh cry out for the living God” (Psalm 84: 2).

It seems that everything changes. Summer to winter, life to death. But there is an unchanging constant in our hearts. Jesus says, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

Whose “word” is it when our “heart and flesh cry out for the living God”? We know “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). And though “we do not know how to pray as we ought,” we know that Spirit is praying within us “with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26).

We need to listen to our hearts. Television and externals draw our eyes, iPods and cellulars our ears. Pleasures attract our bodies. These can drown out the words both we and God are speaking in our hearts.

But not forever: “Heaven and earth will pass away.” We don’t need faith to know that. We may choose not to think about it, however, unless faith assures us that something—Christ’s words—“will not pass away.”

Faith feeds and is fed by fidelity. If we think of ourselves as “stewards of God’s mysteries,” then, “like good stewards of the manifold grace of God,” we will be “trustworthy” in serving both ourselves and others by remembering and using “whatever gift each of us has received” (1Corinthians 4:1-2; 1Peter 4:10).

Like faith.

PRAY: “Lord, let me hear my heart.”

PRACTICE: Give yourself some silence. Listen.