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The Forward Day by Day Meditation for March 9, 2023

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THURSDAY, March 9 GREGORY OF NYSSA, Bishop and Theologian, c.394

John 5:19 Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise.”

Jesus heals the man who has been sick for thirty-eight long years. Thirty-eight years of wondering what value there might be in life, of questioning who and where God is, of cursing the very ground from which he cannot rise.

I imagine this man felt singularly punished. Why him? But we hear in Jeremiah that not just this man but all of creation is cursed. Jeremiah himself declares the curse on creation: the earth as a void, the skies without light, mountains quaking. If one didn’t know better, one might suspect Jeremiah of foreseeing climate change and related destruction. But even with Jeremiah—and always with God—there is hope. There is tomorrow and restoration. There is re-creation, and, as with Jesus who refutes the criticisms of religious leaders, there is healing and there is resurrection.

MOVING FORWARD: “I am the resurrection and the life,” says the Lord. What desolation in your life might God restore to newness?

PRAY for the Diocese of Renk (South Sudan)

Today the Church remembers .

Ps [70], 71 * 74 | Jeremiah 4:9-10,19-28 | Romans 2:12-24 | John 5:19-29