Oh Heavenly Ruler!

As I meditate on the words of today's "Oh!" antiphon, I am struck by two different facets of this prayer.

First, it is interesting to note how our faith speaks to us through events of history. Moses lived, the bush burned, Sinai happened. All of these are historical happenings in the divine Drama. However, they also provide fodder for our internal ruminations concerning who God is. What do these events reveal about the God who is? What do they tell us about the One to Whom We Are Praying?

You tell me after you pray this prayer with the Church.

Secondly, there is hierarchy here. Yes, I've addressed this "issue" before in these blogs. Once again, my theory holds that "hierarchy happens." And there is nothing basically wrong with that.

But what kind of hierarchy are we speaking of here with the words "Adonai" and "Ruler of Israel?" For my money, I look to God to provide the definition.

Yes, in the Hebrew Scriptures, as in the Church today, there are repeated demonstrations that hierarchy sometimes causes problems. Bad kings are crowned. Evil churchmen gain ecclesiastical office. The lords sometimes "lord it over" the rest of us and mess up pretty badly. Yes, it is enough sometimes to make one run screaming into the arms of a gender-neutral Diety.

Still, I have hard time throwing out the divine image baby with the human circumstance bathwater. I learn what the true Lord (Adonai) and the real Ruler are through looking at the Incarnate Son. His palace is a stable, his court a rag tag assembly of peasants. His throne is a Cross. He rules by serving. That is the Lord of my Church, the one whose loving, self giving service informs every ideal of leadership.

and so today we pray....

O Adonai and Ruler of the house of Israel,
you appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush,
and on Mount Sinai gave him your law.
Come, and with an outstretched arm redeem us.

More Light on Blind Bart from B. XVI

Benedict XVI had this to say about Sunday's gospel encounter between Bartemaeus and Jesus, an event whose decisive moment, he said, was the "personal, direct encounter between the Lord and that man who was suffering."



"They are before one another: God with his will to cure and the man with his desire to be cured," the Pope observed. "Two liberties, two converging wills."The blind man's entreaty, full of faith, ends in the miracle. "God's joy, man's joy," said the Holy Father.

And from that moment, Bartimaeus became a disciple of Jesus, "and he goes up with the Master to Jerusalem to take part with him in the great mystery of salvation," the Pontiff recalled. The account "evokes the itinerary of the catechumen toward the sacrament of baptism, which in the early Church was also called 'Illumination,'" because the "faith is a path of illumination," noted Benedict XVI.

"It starts from the humility of acknowledging one's need of salvation and arrives at the personal encounter with Christ, who calls to follow him on the way of love. "It is from this model that "the itineraries of Christian initiation have been established in the Church, which prepare for the sacraments of baptism, confirmation and the Eucharist," he stated.

And in places where baptism is received as a child, the Pope continued, "catechetical and spiritual experiences are proposed to young people and adults which enable them to undertake a path of rediscovery of the faith in a mature and conscious way, in order to assume later a coherent commitment to witness." The task carried out by pastors and catechists in this field is crucial, the Holy Father said. "The rediscovery of the value of one's baptism is the basis of the missionary commitment of every Christian."The Gospel shows that he who lets himself be fascinated by Christ cannot do without witnessing the joy of following in his footsteps. "He concluded: "We understand even more that, in virtue of baptism, we have an inherent missionary vocation."