Lectio Divina — Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Theme: murdered
1. Lectio — What is God saying to me?
«“…you are the children of those who murdered the prophets.”
— Matthew 23:31»
Jesus speaks harsh words today. The scribes and Pharisees build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous while assuring themselves that, had they lived in the days of their ancestors, they would never have participated in shedding the prophets’ blood.
It is easy for me to say the same.
I can condemn yesterday’s injustice precisely because yesterday’s injustice costs me nothing. I can honor the dead prophet while resisting the living prophetic voice. I can look backward at those who murdered and imagine myself safely among the innocent.
But Jesus turns history into an examination of conscience.
“Thou shalt not kill” cannot mean merely that I have never physically taken another person’s life. Jesus continually takes commandments beyond the external act and into the human heart. My choices participate in systems and relationships that either protect life or diminish it.
So today I cannot merely ask, Who murdered the prophets?
I must ask:
What ways of living that I accept today deprive another person—or a future generation—of what is necessary for life?
2. Meditatio — What is God saying to my life?
Here at The Glenn, the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” seems straightforward when I imagine murder as an individual act of violence. But it becomes considerably more uncomfortable when I consider my place among the portion of humanity consuming resources at a rate that deprives poorer nations and future generations of what they need to survive.
I may never see the person affected by my consumption.
That distance makes innocence remarkably easy.
The electricity comes through a wire. Water comes through a pipe. Fuel comes through a pump. Food appears on a shelf. Packages arrive at the door. Trash disappears when it is hauled away. I experience the beginning and end of countless transactions while much of what happens between them remains invisible.
And because I do not intend anyone’s death, I can easily conclude that the Fifth Commandment has nothing to say about any of it.
Yet creation reminds me that nothing truly disappears.
Yesterday I reflected upon making The Glenn more dependent upon clean energy. Today Jesus pushes the question deeper. Renewable energy cannot simply be an interesting improvement to my property. My use of energy is connected with other people, other creatures and generations I will never meet.
That does not mean that every act of consumption makes me a murderer. Such a conclusion would flatten important moral distinctions and turn examination of conscience into accusation. But neither can I use those distinctions to escape the harder question of solidarity.
If my comfort depends upon another person’s deprivation, I need to know it.
If my abundance produces costs that someone poorer must bear, I need to confront it.
If what I consume today diminishes what tomorrow’s children will inherit, I cannot simply decorate the tombs of yesterday’s prophets and congratulate myself for being more enlightened than their murderers.
Perhaps ecological conversion begins when the stranger downstream, the worker I never meet, the family in another country, and the child not yet born cease being abstractions.
They become my neighbors.
3. Oratio — What do I want to say to God?
Lord Jesus, forgive me when distance hides from me the consequences of my choices.
Teach me to protect life not only with my words, but through the way I consume, share and care for creation.
Give me the courage to change what love requires me to change.
Amen.
4. Contemplatio — What word will I rest in?
Murdered.
It is a disturbing word to carry into prayer—and perhaps that is why I need to carry it.
Magnifica humanitas reminds me that Christian solidarity does not begin with an ideology. It begins with Christ and is nourished by the Eucharist.
That makes today’s meditation especially uncomfortable.
I receive the Eucharist as communion with Christ, but I cannot receive the Body of Christ while imagining that the suffering of other members of that Body has nothing to do with me. The Eucharist teaches me that belonging and sharing cannot finally be separated.
At the altar I receive what I could never produce for myself.
I receive.
I give thanks.
I share.
And then I am sent.
Perhaps that Eucharistic pattern should become the pattern of my stewardship at The Glenn. The land is received. Water is received. Sunlight is received. Animals are received. My ability to work is received. Even the resources with which I might build solar shade structures or make other changes are gifts before they are possessions.
Solidarity asks what I will do with what I have received.
The diversity of convictions within the Church does not have to make us enemies. Magnifica humanitas reminds me that those differences can become a richness when we remember that unity is both a gift received and a responsibility to be fulfilled.
That means I cannot answer the violence and division of the world by creating more division. Nor can I protect communion by remaining silent about the consequences of our choices. Communion requires something harder: speaking truth while continuing to recognize the person with whom I disagree as belonging to the same human family.
Jesus’ accusation about those who murdered the prophets therefore becomes more than a condemnation of people long dead.
It becomes my examination of conscience.
I cannot change what previous generations did.
I cannot personally solve global inequality.
But I can ask whether my little corner of creation is moving toward greater consumption or greater communion.
And after receiving the Eucharist, perhaps the question becomes very simple:
If Christ gives himself to me as Bread so that others may have life, what am I willing to give up so that others may live?
Wednesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
