Description and Chapters:
(essay is below)
In this episode of the Scripture Sessions, we explore the Mass readings for Sunday, February 16, 2025, focusing on the first reading from Jeremiah and a passage from the Gospel. The discussion centers on the themes of trust and hope in the Lord versus relying on created things, emphasizing how such faith ensures spiritual resilience and prosperity.
00:00 Introduction and Overview
00:51 First Reading: The Book of Jeremiah
01:49 Interpreting the Curse and Blessing
06:20 Life's Seasons and Spiritual Lessons
08:59 Trust and Hope in the Lord
14:36 Gospel Reflection: Jesus' Teachings
19:08 Personal Reflections and Conclusion
24:53 Closing Remarks and Subscriptions
Essay:
I’ve been going a little crazy trying to muster the inspiration to write even the '“short little something” that I promised to write when I recorded this episode on trust in God. Writer’s Block is worse when you’re a blockhead. But it doesn’t help when I myself have difficulty trusting in God. So I’ve decided to write about is that difficulty, rather than pretend to have accomplished the ideal.
I have been talking a lot about “Credo vs. Fidei” lately—belief in the mind vs. a confidence of faith which is from the heart. I trust in God as a matter of intellectual belief, but my heart doesn’t follow along. It’s sometimes difficult for me to trust God because my experience in trusting him has brought me down really rocky roads a little too often; almost predictably, and sometimes seeming like a mean joke. Like Lucy pulling that football away from a charging Charlie Brown and just the right moment. Predictable. Mean. Yet Charlie Browne literally falls for it every time. Anyway…
I know that He isn’t always leading me down those rocky roads, but He allows them to be in my path. Why? And why does he take so long to set things right?
The Lord chastises so that he can elevate—or something like that. He tears down so that he can build up. It’s all over the scriptures, so I know that it’s true. By why, Lord, why me?
‘Such griefs with such men well agree, But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?”
-Coleridge, The Pains of Sleep
The Lord is trustworthy, always. The problem is me. I’m impatient, and I also want things on my own terms, even though I’m fully aware of how stupid that is. Something I have learned along the pathways and crossroads of my walk with God is that the cycles are long and complex. The road from here to the outcome of greatest Good is necessarily perilous, rocky and full of hills to climb, because we often want a Good that we’re not ready for, not deserving of, or couldn’t handle possessing even if we tried. I always say that God brought Israel through the desert for forty years not just to punish and purge them, but also to strengthen and prepare them “to take the land” that God was giving to them. I believe that the stretches of road that have most made it difficult for me to trust God from my heart are the ones that I most needed to traverse in my preparation for whatever small or great “Promised Land” the Lord was preparing me for.
That preparation takes time. One difficult stretch sometimes just prepares us for the next one—not for the sunshine, but for a subsequent next dark night—with perhaps only a short break in between. To put it in TV terms (forgive me, but I am a media guy, after all): We’re tuning in, expecting a standalone episode and we don’t realize we’ve tuned into a miniseries or a short-run television epic (Remember Twin Peaks?). These difficult open-ended episodes are all components to a whole preparation but we can become disappointed with God because we expected satisfaction at the end of that episode, but none came. Joke’s on us. We shoulda looked at the TV Guide (Go to the Psalms). “My bad!”
Trust in God. Let go of your expectations, because sometimes that is what we trust more than God (referring to something I said in the episode there). Something that helps me is some advice I can give to you: Be in the moments of the day. Pay attention to the Goods that are in it. Pause and admire what’s Beautiful in it. Those moments provide a powerful context when we’re going through some spiritual or temporal trial. They also tell a story that God is actively writing, just for you. That’s the best way I can explain it. You’ll have to put it in to practice to truly understand.
God bless you, guys!
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