Daily Mass Reflection (Nov 27, 2024)

Great and Wonderful Are Your Works!

What I love about the connecting thread between the first reading, the Psalm and the Gospel today is that it turns on its head the expectation of God’s works. This actually becomes an essential part of how to understand God, His will and our relationship with Him. 

While the first reading, from Revelation 15, and the Psalm present the typical understanding of how God acts upon nature through power, which is not wrong of course, the Gospel is all about Jesus telling his apostles how they are to hear witness. God’s works are not just done through them, and us, but are them, and us. This is the “natural” order of grace (and by natural from God’s perspective actually is supernatural). 

Unfortunately, this understanding of grace often comes with the baggage of reducing the reality of God or dismissing the supernatural. I think anyone who does this has not actually met a Saint. When one does, one nearly cannot help but believe that God is not only real but works through us. The Apostles made this reality present and so are we.