"You Will be a Watered Garden"

On Friday there were some good scripture passages on which to comment. The first came from the responsorial psalm, Psalm 51: “For you are not pleased with sacrifices; should I offer a burnt offering, you would not accept it. My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite and humbled, O God, you will not spurn.” God wants our hearts, and when we turn to Him, humble and seeking His help, He loves to come to our aid.

God is not pleased in animal sacrifices in themselves; the Israelites were worshipping fertility gods symbolized by bulls (calves) and goats, so God had them sacrifice their very gods. Killing and eating one’s gods does not make for happy gods. They had to sacrifice lambs because, insofar as they sinned, they were worshipping themselves. Thus, animal sacrifices were a good penitential act showing God that one wasn’t going to worship those false gods, but it didn’t mean that one couldn’t find some other false gods to worship. Animal sacrifice didn’t guarantee that one was loving and obeying the one true God. We show God we love Him when, humbly, we give Him our heart and our whole selves.

The second scripture passage was from Matthew 9:14-15: “The disciples of John approached Jesus and said, ‘Why do we and the Pharisees fast much, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast’.” Here, Jesus refers to Himself as the bridegroom. He is our husband. Part of my theory is that right from the beginning, God made us to be His spouse; when man and woman are made in the image and likeness of God in the very first chapter of Genesis, He is making us to be His bride. We were stolen by Satan in the garden, so God comes to earth to win back His wayward bride. The Catholic life is the life of a bride of Christ who receives His body and blood in the Eucharist to bear fruit for God.

Today, Saturday, also had some readings which resonate with my theory. The first reading is from Isaiah 58: 9-14: “Thus says the LORD: If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land. He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails. The ancient ruins shall be rebuilt for your sake, and the foundations from ages past you shall raise up; ‘Repairer of the breach,’ they shall call you, ‘Restorer of ruined homesteads.’ If you hold back your foot on the Sabbath from following your own pursuits on my holy day; if you call the Sabbath a delight, and the LORD’s holy day honorable; if you honor it by not following your ways, seeking your own interests, or speaking with malice then you shall delight in the LORD, and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth; I will nourish you with the heritage of Jacob, your father, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.”

This passage consists of two parallel parts. They are both structured saying, if you do this good deed, then something good will happen to you. The good that will happen in the first half is that God will give plenty, renew your strength, and you will be like a watered garden and an ever flowing spring of water. The second half says that you will delight in the Lord and be nourished. The two rewards seem to be arranged in a chiasm that looks like this:
A God will give you strength and plenty
B You will be a watered garden and an ever flowing spring
B’ You will delight in the Lord
A’ You will be nourished by the Lord

What is most significant is what is in the middle. The two parallel middle parts are 1) being an ever flowing spring of water and 2) taking delight in God. They are the same thing, if my theory is correct. I say that the tree of life in Genesis two and three is both the river broken into four sections and the heart, the heart that loves, trusts and obeys God. Remember that Eden means delight, so here we have a garden and Eden. When our heart loves, trusts and obeys God, it delights in Him; when it delights in God, our hearts become the four-sectioned river or spring which always produces water and good fruit and the fulfillment of what Jesus said: “Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water” (John 7: 38). When our hearts are turned toward God, then He gives us strength, nourishment and plenty.

The responsorial psalm is Psalm 86, and the refrain is from verse 11: “Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth.” In order for our hearts to be obedient to God, we need to know what pleases Him. We ask Him to teach us His ways so that we know how to please the One who loves us.

In the gospel, Jesus calls Levi, the tax collector, to follow Him and then goes to a great banquet at his house. The scribes and Pharisees were upset that Jesus ate with tax collectors and sinners, but Jesus responded: “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do. I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners” (Luke 5:32). Of course, we are all sinners, but only those who realize they are a sinner, only those who are contrite and humble of heart as we saw in Psalm 51, only these please God. So, we have come full circle tonight.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
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