Wednesday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
In hospital ministry no two days are the same and for most patients and their families being in the hospital is not a planned event. Often being in the hospital has been forced by some health crisis. Sometimes we have some anticipation of an unfolding need for health care and at other times events like heart attacks, strokes or even car accidents demand emergent care. In both cases patients and their families often need to make crucial decisions with little time or space for discernment. In these cases decisions are made without certainty or clarity.
In our first reading, we find a family dealing with tough circumstances which have likely been building for a while as a plague worsens across the world. The brothers in this family went to Egypt to beg for rations. Yet into this scene, we recall the back-story of brothers who sold their youngest sibling into slavery because in their emotional lack of clarity, basically jealousy, they were motivated to sell their youngest sibling into slavery. Consider how our own lack of clarity causes us to make imprudent decisions at times.
It was Joseph's brothers lack of trust in the love of their father that convinced them that they needed to take matters into their own hands. What the siblings failed to realize as the story unfolds is that the Lord worked through their unfaithfulness to make blessings in disguise. It is also important to the story, that before the blessings were revealed, they had to come to terms with their own wrongdoing. Indeed, their suffering for three days in jail made them think deeply of not only their own tomb, but of the metaphorical tomb in which they laid their brother.
Fortunately for Joseph, his brothers and for all of us, God’s mercy is freely offered if we place our trust in the Lord. Joseph’s freeing his brothers from bondage happened on three levels. First of all, he let them out of jail, then he challenged them to come to terms with what they did wrong and thirdly, he provided for their physical needs. On the cross, Christ freed us from sin. Through this same cross we are challenged to die to self, so that we can rise to new life with Christ. It is this same Christ that provides for our physical needs with daily bread and Eucharist.
In becoming more fully attuned to the Lord providing for us on multiple levels then we gain clarity. This clarity helps us to reconcile who we with the world around us. It also helps us see the road ahead and how the Lord has been quietly guiding us all along. It allows us to see that even through suffering the Lord has be drawing us to Himself for both now and forever. Amen.
-Michael Montgomery