Our response to the readings on this Tuesday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time is from Psalm 90, the only psalm of the one hundred and fifty psalms that is attributed to Moses who is named as a man of God in the first verse of the psalm. We hear Moses considering the shortness of human life and the futility that human beings often feel in the face of the continual assaults that we all endure in our lifetimes.
In the Second Letter of Peter, the sacred author is calling upon his readers to remember that like the human beings who populate it, the world will also one day come to an end. With that knowledge before us, Peter asks us to live in such a way that we will be found blameless so that when the day of eternity dawns we will find ourselves counted among the blessed.
One cannot read the prayer of Moses without remembering the futility that he must have felt toward the end of his life when he came to realize that he was not going to enter the Promised Land with his fellow Israelites. After so many years of leading God’s chosen people, he would be denied the happiness of entering into the land flowing with milk and honey. As great a prophet as he was, Moses does not enjoy the assurance that we have in Jesus. We know that if we heed the advice given us in the first reading, we will enter the Promised Land. St. Peter counsels us to be patient as we grapple with the futility of our humanity, the same kind of patience that God exemplifies in God’s dealings with us. Just as God dealt with the Israelites with patience, so God deals with us.
We shall one day see the glory of God in the land of the living after our short lifetime in his world. We are assured of this by the Resurrection of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator