13 August 2022
Saturday of the Nineteenth Week in Ordinary Time
“Return and live!” These are the words, spoken by the Lord to the house of Israel, which conclude today’s first reading (Ezek 18:1–10, 13b, 30–32). They epitomize God’s desire for us when we have gone astray, a desire to which anyone who has ever loved a wayward child—whether as a parent, a teacher, a mentor, or a friend—can relate. They are words full of longing, a longing for the closeness and intimacy with us that God wishes to reestablish but will not force upon us without our consent. God earnestly desires to give us “a new heart and a new spirit,” even to fill our hearts with his own Holy Spirit. Yet he respects the freedom he has given us too much to act without our cooperation with his grace. If only we can but return, repent, and receive again the fountain of life!
In our prayer today, let us contemplate this desire of the Lord that we—and all his straying children—would return to him, symbolized so powerfully in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Where we have gone astray, let us ask him for the grace to return, and let us also ask that we might share in his desire for the return of all his children, scattered throughout the world.