Friday of the Eighteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 411

I remember the deeds of the LORD;
yes, I remember your wonders of old. 
And I meditate on your works;
your exploits I ponder.


Perhaps because I have more years behind me than ahead, I appreciate the weight of history all the more. 

Arthur C. Clark's 1953 sci-fi novel, Childhood's End, describes a sudden, catastrophic end to human history. For no apparent reason as far as the Earth and Earthlings are concerned, the planet is destroyed. Wars had ceased, but not through human decision; a kind of economic and social utopia reigned but the problems remained unresolved. 

I didn't like the book when I read it in the early 1980's but I understand it has a huge following. Many people found its resolution -- a generation of human freaks is whisked off the planet to a distant galaxy -- credible and satisfying. Apparently the "Overlords" who had come to deliver the selected humans from the doomed planet saw the rest of us as expendable. All of our stories and experience and wisdom counted for nothing. 

The Christian doctrine of Salvation History, I believe, is wider and more penetrating than Clark's narrow perspective. His novel reflects a cynicism born of world war, when human beings are used by their overlords as cannon fodder. They are shredded by artillery, charred by incendiaries and incinerated by nuclear bombs. Civilians and soldiers, architectural wonders and worthless hovels, immortal masterpieces and cheap tabloids: all are incinerated in the desperate struggle. 

The Christian vision is more particular. It finds meaning even in the quiet lives of simple people: a runaway Egyptian sees a burning bush; a young shepherd slays a seasoned warrior, a Galilean woman is visited by an angel, an old woman is cured by a peripatetic preacher. God hears not only the cry of a nation, he also answers the prayers of the unloved, overlooked individual, like Hannah at Shiloh. 

Every human story is important in the sweep of Salvation History. No one's life is without meaning. 

The great Franciscan philosopher/theologian John Duns Scotus pointed to the haecceity of all things. Every single thing, spiritual and material, has its "thisness." It actually exists; it is real; it has both meaning and history. 

Every single person has enormous worth in the heart of God, who is infinitely capable of multitasking. His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches over me. 

In today's first reading, Moses reminds the people of the importance of their history: 

“Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? 

Because we believe our God is the Lord of History, every day and many times a day we pray, 

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Amen 

The doctrine of Salvation History assures us that our particular stories, including the trials we face, the crosses we carry and the resurrections we expect are not in vain. 

Though I thought I had toiled in vain, and for nothing, uselessly, spent my strength, Yet my reward is with the LORD, my recompense is with my God.