Living with God’s Word in our hearts
The one who does justice will live in the presence of the Lord’. In this psalm refrain response God promises to live with those who live their lives with justice, whose hearts are aligned with His Word. God’s Word sustains, nourishes, and guides us. It offers opportunity for encounter, friendship, and transformation. It calls us to action. God’s Word lives in us, in our hearts.
In the Gospel Jesus places great emphasis on the heart, telling the Pharisees that ‘they have substituted their own laws for the Law of God and are more concerned about outer cleanness than cleanness of heart’. He warns that it is not external observance or lack of it that determines one’s relationship with God but a heart that is ever being transformed by divine love which then becomes visible in concrete acts.
Moses, in the first reading, urges the people to ‘be faithful to God’s Law, without adding to it or subtracting from it…it will give evidence of our wisdom and intelligence to the nations’. And, St James, in the second reading, implores us to ‘humbly welcome the Word that has been planted in us…to be doers of the Word and not hearers only…to care for orphans and widows. To keep ourselves unstained by the world’.
God gave us His laws to help us grow closer to Him. He calls us to witness in our daily actions an inward disposition that matches what we hear, profess and do in our liturgies, living a life balanced with service and goodness. Our worship is empty if we do not live as God calls us to live and to honour Him not only with our lips, but our hearts.
Today, at the beginning of the month of Season of Creation, and as we celebrate Father’s Day, may our actions reflect what is inside our hearts, the source from which all our thoughts, words, and deeds flow.
‘The task of our lives is not only to acknowledge and honour the Word within, but to manifest it, express it and live it…for the Word within, when outwardly expressed, is the manifestation of Christ’s consciousness in the world’ – Mary Reaman
Debbie Matheson
Lay Pastoral Leader
