March 17/Fourth Saturday of Lent
O searcher of heart and soul, O just God. ~ Ps 7.9
Consider a jeweler examining a diamond. She holds the magnification loupe up to her eye in one hand, tilting and turning the stone around in the other. Through the other end of the loupe, her scrutinizing eye looks enormous and even scary. Now you have an idea of what it means for the psalmist to describe God as “searcher of heart and soul.” The verb translated as “search” – a verb that in biblical usage nearly always has God as its subject – connotes intense scrutiny for the purpose of determining the essential qualities of the thing scrutinized. To put it less formally, God is conducting a deep spiritual testing of what in English translation is called “soul,” but in Hebrew literally means the “kidneys,” namely, the innermost self. God is not just giving us a cursory glance. Rather, he is fixing his gaze intently upon us, piercing through our outer shell and burrowing into the soft, sensitive tissue within, the secret and hidden and shameful parts that we try to hide. We must know that under such intense scrutiny our flaws will be exposed and visible to God. He will search out and find the hard places in our hearts, the bitter parts of our souls — and yet all the same, he does not discard us, imperfect as we are. Rather, he forgives us our shortcomings, pardons our transgressions, and asks us to follow the path of penitence. Thanking God for his ever-present mercy, may we pray, with John Henry Newman, “Be gracious to me, and enable me to be what I know I ought to be.”
O God, Searcher of the human heart, I ask you today for the clarity of vision to seek rightly and to love well, in union with your holy will. Amen.
For today’s readings, click here: http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/031718.cfm
