“Their sturdy backs bent down, by labor and fatigue, their eyes intent upon the earth, sift through stubble discarded by the reapers.”

—Sister Michaela O’Connor

Sunday Scripture Reflection for December 3, 2023
First Sunday of Advent

“Yet, O LORD, you are our father; we are the clay and you the potter: we are all the work of your hands.”
This line from Sunday’s First Reading contains a tiny three-letter word that makes a BIG difference — we are ALL the work of your hands. Not just me and people like me. Not just us and people like us — same color, same faith, same values, same language, same anything. No — ALL. By the looks of social media these days, we have somehow been given license to be rude, bigoted, nasty, even threatening and violent toward anyone who is the least bit different from us. If this tendency escalates, and it seems that it will, there can be no good end, except as the first reading also notes, “Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, with the mountains quaking before you.” We don’t usually like mountains quaking, but if that’s what it will take to knock some sense into us, then so be it. We are ALL the work of God’s hands, even the “bad” ones, who were not likely born bad.