March 9/Third Tuesday of Lent
Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.
Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. ~ Ps 25.4-5
Not long ago, I observed one of those birthdays considered “significant.” Unable to celebrate in suitable fashion, instead I made a list of the people who had most influenced my life over these decades. After completing the list, I was not surprised to note that many were teachers. For other than my family and a cleric or two along the way, no group of people has played as important a role in my life, from my 5th grade reading teacher, with whom I shared a love of children’s books, to the renowned Dante scholar at divinity school a decade ago who guided me through Dante’s Inferno and Purgatory up to the heights of Paradise. What they all had in common was not only a passion for their field, whether it was Shakespeare or Roman Catholic ethics or the Book of Ezekiel, but a concern for and connection to me, as their pupil — in a word, love. Today, our psalm invites us to think about God as our teacher. We will not emerge from his divine instruction knowing how to conjugate a verb, or solve a chemistry equation, or write a paper on the French Revolution. But we will learn what is more important, no, what is most important: the ways of God, the paths of God, the truth of God. As the German theologian and priest Romano Guardini once wrote, “None of the great things in human life springs from the intellect; every one of them issues from the heart and its love.” It is in the classroom of prayer that we experience God’s love; it is from that classroom that we can take those lessons of love and spread them abroad in the world.
God, Through prayer and in prayer, teach me your love. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/030921.cfm
To hear the Rastatt Vocal Ensemble sing Josef Gabriel Rheinberger’s “Ad te levavi,” click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6PHC-_bguM
