This week we Lectio the Liturgy with the Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Keep your family safe, O Lord, with unfailing care, that, relying solely on the hope of heavenly grace, they may be defended always by your protection. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
I’m not a visual person. I have aphantasia, which is the inability to voluntarily visualize mental images. I’ve never been able to conjure an image in my imagination. It was just 5 years ago that I found out that the vast majority of people could see images and I didn’t know it was a real thing.
On occasion, however, God gives me what I call a “sense” of an image, and that’s what happened as I meditated on this prayer.
In the prayer, our request is that God would keep His family safe with His unfailing care. In Latin, for the word care, we find the word pietate which means faithfulness to natural ties. This the tie of familial love, a father to his children. When the prayer tells us that His care is unfailing, think continuous or never ending. Even though we think we’re bothering Him too much, God never tires of taking care of us.
I “sensed” the image when I was pondering that we rely solely on the hope of heavenly grace. I had a sense of mountains, shaped like upside down W’s, a lot like the Teton Mountains (https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/nature/index.htm). We know that the spiritual path we walk is going to have ups and down. As we move up and down these mountains, we also know that even though it’s not always easy, we are safe because Jesus is with us on both sides of the hill.
In the image I received, on the descent of the mountain, the person’s foot slipped and they were afraid of falling all the way down. That meant that they were going to have to start all over again, from the very bottom. They called out to God and He showed up with His heavenly grace and spared them from a fall by picking them up and placing them on the next mountain, straight across from where they were.
Their climb on the next mountain went the same, joyfully walking and climbing with Jesus, but on the downhill side, they slipped again, just not quite as far down as the first time. And again, they relied on Jesus’ grace and He took them straight across to the next mountain.
In a mountain range, you will notice the that there is more distance between the tops of the mountains than at the bottom. However, in the image I received, neither the height nor the distance to the next mountain brought fear to the climber because they trusted that everything beneath them was grace.
Perhaps you’ve met someone and thought, “I wish my faith was as strong as theirs.” We usually don’t know the details of their journey and we shouldn’t judge someone’s outside by our inside, but I would wager that in their own spiritual journey on the mountains, as they started sliding down, they learned to call on God and rely on His grace much more quickly each time they started to fall. Every time they called out, God showed up, and every time He did, their faith grew. They knew that they could rely on Him.
One of the resources I use for study suggested replacing the word rely with the word striving. Imagine living a life striving only for the heavenly grace of God. What if we would look at the faith life of someone else and instead of wishing we had faith like theirs, we would choose to match their measure of striving for God’s grace? What if our striving for God’s grace matched our effort of climbing the mountains?
If the mountain ahead of you looks like it’s too big, remember that when we strive for and rely on God’s grace, we are always defended by His protection. Know that when you are defended by His protection, you are always kept safe because God tirelessly looks out for His family.