Sometimes we find it hard to notice what is right in front of us, including God’s word. In today’s reflection on the daily mass readings, Fr Richard considers how we might pay more attention to what God is saying to us.
Readings for Thursday of the third week of Lent can be found here.
The aviation industry is famously safety conscious, meaning that travelling by air is one of the safest forms of transport. Yet occasionally astonishing mistakes can be made. In 1983 Air Canada switched from using imperial units to metric for calculating fuel. Despite warning notices in the cockpit, the pilots forgot this, used pounds instead of kilograms and had to make an emergency landing when they began to run out of fuel. In 2009, two pilots got chatting and overflew their intended airport by 100 miles. When the cockpit recording was played back, it turned out they somehow ignored multiple warning sirens. In both cases ignorance wasn’t the problem – the pilots knew what they should have been doing. Instead they failed to notice of what was right in front of them.
The same thing is happening in our readings today. Jeremiah says that God has given his people the law, shown them the way they should walk, and even sent his prophets to reinforce the message. “Yet they did not listen to me or incline their ear, but stiffened their neck”, says God, and you can almost hear the frustration in his voice. Despite all the messages and all the warnings, the people just will not do the right thing. In the Gospel, people are seeing Jesus’ power in front of their very eyes. He is casting out a demon and so demonstrating that the kingdom of God has broken into this world. Yet the people are somehow unable to accept this, instead suggesting that Jesus is in league with the devil.
We might laugh at the airline pilots who made such basic mistakes, or the people in our readings who ignored God’s clear message right in front of them. Yet we should ask ourselves whether we are sometimes just as guilty. God’s word is always before us; the challenge for us is to be attentive to what he might be saying. As Lent continues, may we listen for his voice, hear what he is saying to us, and then follow where he leads.
Mass today is in St Dyfrig and St Samson, Grangetown, at 10am.
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