"I AM COMING TO YOU IN A DENSE CLOUD."

Homily for July 27^th, 2017: Exodus 19, 1-2, 9-11, 16-20.

“I am coming to you in a dense cloud,” God tells Moses in our first reading. Isn’t that how God normally come to us: hidden, obscurely? To some of the saints, God speaks directly. His message to the young Jewish zealot Saul of Tarsus was clear and direct: “Saul, Saul,” the Lord said to him as he was journeying to Damascus to arrest as many Christians as he could find: “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:4).

Centuries later God would speak no less directly to a young Italian named Francis, praying in a broken down little church just outside Assisi: “Rebuild my Church,” were the words Francis heard. Francis started to make repairs to the small building in which he had heard those words. In time, he realized that what God wanted him to repair was people: those who had entered God’s Church through baptism. Francis would spend the rest of his life at this task, telling his followers: “Preach always. If necessary, use words.”.

In our own time God spoke to a young religious Sister named Teresa, riding a train in India, giving her what Teresa called ever after: “an order: to leave the convent and live among the poorest of the poor, helping them however she could.” At her death a half century later the Missionaries of Charity, which Mother Teresa founded, numbered close to 4,000. Their numbers continue to grow today.

To most of us God comes “in a dense cloud”: through the still, small voice of conscience, through the words of Holy Scripture, through the needs of those whom we encounter along life’s way. How better could we respond to our first reading today than to repeat, as we go through the day, the words given to us by the Church during Lent in her daily Office of Readings:

“If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.”