Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
The dreams are not wild enough
There was a composer and a musician named Michael Card who produced a lot of contemporary religious music. And in one of his songs, he’s talking about the Jewish people and the promise of a Messiah. And the line in it that I really liked, and every now and then I will think of a little bit, is this. “They discovered that their wildest dreams weren’t wild enough.” “They discovered that their wildest dreams weren’t wild enough.”
In other words, their vision of what it meant to be the Messiah was narrow. It was too small. And as a result, they had difficulty in recognizing Jesus when he came on this earth because Jesus was bigger and different than the Messiah they imagined.
The readings today remind us of this wild dream of God who sends his Messiah so that we can live forever, that we can receive salvation and live forever with God in heaven. And the images in Ezekiel, in the first reading, are not that much different than what we would experience in baptism.
God sprinkles clean water upon the people. God cleanses their sins. God helps them by giving them a natural heart capable of more love than they could imagine. God does everything by inviting the people into this new way of life. And only one thing is required of the people in the book of Ezekiel to receive this great blessing from God–an open heart.
An open heart, a humble heart, a contrite heart, we learn in the psalm today, is exactly what God needs in order to forgive our sins. And a humble and contrite heart is really quite important, more important than the sacrifices of old under the law.
Jesus gives yet another image of being invited into the kingdom of God by telling this story about the king who seeks to invite all kinds of people. But again, the openness of heart is a requirement. This line at the end about the poor guy who didn’t have a wedding garment has often been understood as the fact that his heart wasn’t in the right place. He wasn’t humble and contrite. He didn’t think much about what he should do going to this feast.
And it can be indicative of us when we don’t really give attention to how we live, to the way in which we treat others. Today, we get a picture in the celebration that we have today of wild dreams that are amazingly wild. Today we celebrate the queenship of Mary. And in this celebration, we are reminded that all around us is the plan of God’s providence. All around us is the constant invitation from God to be part of his kingdom. Through the intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary, let us pray that we might have a humble and contrite heart, accepting God’s invitation to live with him forever.
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