Wednesday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Our God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God. God’s love and faithfulness to God’s people is evidenced in the covenants God initiates. We see this divine fidelity in the five major covenants beginning with Noah and culminating in the New Covenant in Christ. Today we read the covenant God makes with Abram (who will become Abraham). Our psalm sings the truth that the Lord remembers his covenant forever. Reminded of God’s eternal covenant faithfulness, we read Jesus’ admonition around fruit-bearing. God unites us to Godself in covenant love. How do we respond to this divine extravagance and what is the fruit that is evidence that we are partakers in covenant love?
A covenant transcends any concept we have of a contract. Contracts are transactional – the parties who agree to a contract are bound to its terms and conditions. You do this, I do that; if either of us violate the terms then the contract can be considered broken and terminated. God invites us into covenant – a relationship predicated on mutual love that is inherently transformational. Covenant is sacramental and eternal; God keeps God’s promises out of unconditional love, not out of transactional loyalty. Marriage becomes the symbol of God’s deep and abiding, promise-keeping, nurturing, intimate, holy, sacred, eternal bond with us. As we become more mindful of and awaken to the reality that we enjoy this spousal relationship with God, our lives become more and more a reflection of covenant love. Our lives become ripe with the fruit of spousal love, joy, and commitment.
Our God is a Covenant God. God is unconditionally loving, faithful, forgiving, slow to anger, gracious, merciful, patient, kind, compassionate, close to the poor and the brokenhearted, steadfast, mighty to save. These are just a few of God’s attributes as evidenced by God’s covenants with us. Our response to God should mirror what we see in God. We receive unconditional love; we offer it back. We receive mercy; we are merciful toward others. We receive forgiveness; we forgive others. As partakers of the New Covenant in Christ, we become sharers in the Paschal Mystery. We die and rise with Christ in baptism and become new creatures in Christ. Filled with the Holy Spirit, we receive God’s very presence and the gifts and graces we need to mirror covenantal love.
As children of the New Covenant in Christ, we are called to fidelity to this covenant relationship. Jesus invites us to bear good fruit, fruit of the Kingdom of Heaven, fruit of the New Covenant. As others look at our lives today, will they recognize us as “good trees,” partakers in the New Covenant? What kind of fruit will they see? Today, let us pray that we might mirror the divine attributes that we see in God, that we might be imitators of Christ in his Gospel, that we might manifest the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5) and the evidence of love (1 Corinthians 13). By this New Covenant we become Christ’s Bride, the Church. May our lives so manifest this covenantal relationship that others might recognize our divine union, our divine romance, and be drawn to the same. Thank you, God, for entering into covenant with us, and by your grace, help us to live lives of covenant fruitfulness, through Christ our Lord, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen!
- Elizabeth Wourms