Pour out Love
by Fr. David M. Knight
July 6, 2024
Saint Maria Goretti, Virgin and Martyr; BVM
Lectionary 382
Am 9:11-15/Mt 9:14-17
Amos 9:11-15: The prophets explain our disasters as the natural fruit of our sins. But they proclaim unimaginable happiness as the supernatural fruit of God’s healing response to our repentance. In fact, it is God’s unimaginable love that brings about our repentance. And it is spousal love.
The image, “The juice of grapes shall drip down the mountains, and all the hills shall run with it” inspired this poem of the “end time”:
I will pour wine on your breasts like rain,
Daughter of Jerusalem:
I will pour wine.
When the veils are split and the waters rush forth,
I will pour wine.
O Rose of Sharon, Lily of the Valley,
Your breasts are like doves:
I will pour wine.
From the reed-burst rock, from the cleft in the wall,
I will pour wine.
On that day, Bride of Christ,
Your breasts shall drip with the fruit of the vine:
O I shall pour wine!
Your breasts will be sweeter than the honeycomb, and
My lips shall caress you, before
It is consúmmated.
Christian ministers are always the “friends of the Bridegroom” trying to bring together Bridegroom and the bride. We call people, not to law-observance, but to passionate love. Heaven is a wedding feast. To enter in we must be dressed for a wedding, and our demeanor on earth must show that we are keeping our “lamps lit” in anticipation of the Bridegroom’s coming. Ministry that does not come from and lead to awareness of this kind of relationship with God is not Christian. The ministers of Jesus Christ must be filled with love, excited about love, and exciting others to love.lxv
Matthew 9:14-17: For Christians, this must be the source, attitude and motive that inspire every religious act. Asked why his disciples weren’t fasting, Jesus tells us to focus on the wedding feast:
Every religious act—and everything else we do—should be an expression: a conscious act of expressing love for Jesus as the Bridegroom of the Church. We have no “duties,” “obligations,” “practices,” or rules to observe. All that is the “old wine.” We live, drink and delight in the “new wine,” which is passionate, spousal love of the Bridegroom leading us to the “wedding banquet of the Lamb.” When we are filled with this awareness, we are “new wineskins” and all we do is “new wine.”
Initiative: Think love, live love, grow in love. Minister love to others.
Reflections brought to you by the Immersed in Christ Ministry
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