"Your interests are not in the unspiritual but in the spiritual, since the Spirit of God has made his home in you"
"Come to me all you who labour and are over burdened and I will give you rest."
After the feasts and holy days of the last couple of weeks we have found ourselves in Ordinary time. The Sundays between Trinity and Christ the King are marked by the green vestment and the ever increasing number of the Sunday was we journey towards the years end and Advent. Why do I mention this? Is this just an irrelevant piece of trivia that the members of our congregations need not concern themselves with? Possibly, however, I can see a significance in this season we called Ordinary.
Most of our lives are spent in the realm of the ordinary. Normally our days are plain sailing, day to day, week to week, we just get on with things; our work, our families, our parishes. Now and again this ordinary is punctuated by the less ordinary. Life can take turns and things can happen that make us change. We can experience joys and sadness, sickness and health, disappointment and surprise, things good and bad on the journey. The Pope recently commented, on the jubilee of his priestly ordination, that the fruit of the vine, the grape, need sunshine and rain to make it mature. But back to the ordinary. Even though our experiences can be punctuated by ups and downs, the majority of our lives are lived in a place between the two. We can feel the presence of God, maybe, more keenly in drama - but there is not one second of our existence that is not touched by the presence of the love of God. It is mostly in the regular that we find Him, in the regular we have a chance to grow in his love, in the regular we can lean who God is and the life that gives.
God has made himself known to us in Jesus. Sometimes there is a temptation to think that friendship with Jesus is for 'other people'. Sometimes can only imaging the saints or great priests and bishops really knowing God. And while it is true many of the great legends of our faith were blessed with heroic lives of faith, we lesser mortals can have a really intimate and profound experience of God. I could list of any amount of ordinary things that speak to us of God; a visit, a help out, a baby laughing, the dawn chorus, everyone has their own example. In the Word of God and the celebration of he Sacraments, particularly the Eucharist, we can come face to face with God who wants us to know Him and love Him, just as He knows and loves us.
The Gospel today says "Jesus exclaimed" that the knowledge of God is revealed to mere children. He exclaimed, he just didn't say or teach, he exclaimed this. Then what does He say? He says what I believe to be some of the most beautiful words ever recorded; "Come to me all you who labour and are heavy burdened..and I will give you rest."
Where ever you are in life as you read or hear this, Christ invites you to come to Him. You may be in the depths or on high, most probably you are somewhere in between, where ever you are he says come. Jesus wants to to learn from Him, to be like Him, to be close to Him and when we do the prophesy of Zachariah in the first reading come true; we "rejoice with heart and soul, because the King comes to you" not in splendour but on a donkey, in the ordinary moments of life.
I can't find a Gregorian setting of Venite ad me, so I include an Ambrosian one. Pardon the quality of the video, but you can hear the magnificent sounds of the Church of Milan's setting to the Gospel acclamation on All Saints:
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