Parish Bulletin for Sunday, March 7, 2010

Third Sunday in Lent

Exod. 3:1-8, 13-15 1   Cor. 10:1-6, 10-12   Luke 13:1-9

Igniting the Fire Within

Have you ever had a burning bush experience? Have you ever known a moment in which you were so profoundly in touch with the presence of God that your life from then on was totally transformed by that encounter? Moses' experience of God, as shared today by the author of Exodus, was such an encounter.

There, at the bush that burned but was not consumed, Moses knew the awesome presence of God, and from within that ambience of fear and fascination he began to realize his true identity and his purpose in life. Burning bush experiences are fraught with absolute truth.

There is no dissembling in that moment; there is only the sheer terror but also the great thrill of realizing who God is and who I am before God. This realization is followed by a further incredible awareness that despite who I am and who I am not, despite what I have done and what I have neglected to do, God chooses to be present to me, to call me, to grace me, to call and grace others through me.

Paul's burning bush experience happened on the Damascus road, and the passionate faith in Jesus that took root in him that day is palpable in all his writings; today's second reading is no exception.

Samuel and Isaiah discovered their bushes burning in the temple. Each went forth from that experience resolute in his desire to serve God and God's people as best he could despite the personal cost.

Mary's initial burning bush experience, as told by Luke, was mediated by the angel-messenger in whom she recognized the divine presence. She listened as the voice of God changed her future forever.

Joseph's experience came to him in a dream that encouraged him to surrender his own sense of moral rectitude and his logic to a plan he had not made, but in which he was invited to participate in a very important way.

As for their son, Jesus, perhaps his most poignant burning bush encounter took place in a garden after an intimate meal with friends. Agonizingly alone before the reality of what lay ahead for him, Jesus knew the presence of God in the depths of his suffering. Even before his death on the cross, he allowed himself to be consumed by the will of God for him.

Nearer to our time, one of Dorothy Day's burning bush experiences came with the birth of her daughter Tamar. Of that moment, she wrote, "No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore" (The Long Loneliness, Harper and Row, New York: 1952). Even though that experience and her subsequent devotion to God and the poor cost her the loss of her lover, Day relied on the strength of that experience all her life.

For Thomas Merton, a bush burned and drew him to God at a celebration of the Eucharist he happened upon at Corpus Christi Church on 121st Street in New York. Admitting that he didn't believe or understand or even belong there, Merton said that he left the church that day and wandered leisurely down Broadway looking at what had become for him a new world. He said, "I was not yet used to the clean savor that comes with actual grace." He had a sense of God's presence and realized that "He was there for love of me; He was there in power and might, and what was I in His sight?" (The Seven Storey Mountain, Harcourt Brace, New York: 1948).

With those experiences to ignite our own, each of us is challenged this Lent of 2010 to be willing to discover those burning bushes through which God is revealed to us and we are revealed to God. Perhaps the prayers and penance of this Lent might ignite our own fire.

Rev. Thomas G. Moore

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