's widow SAREPHTA Invoking
"Grant me, O Lord, a little 'time for my musings on the secrets of your writing. Not close to me who knocked on his door. Not without a purpose surely thou, O Lord, you did write many pages full of mysteries. No shortage of lovers of the word holy as deer take refuge in it as in a forest. In it is refreshed. Roam in it from corner to corner as in a meadow. Graze. find rest and ruminate.
O Lord, 'that I go so far: Reveal your writing. Here, your voice is my joy. Your word is my desire beyond desire. Give me what I love. You know I love you: you gave me to love. Do not forsake me, O Lord. Do not overlook this piece of grass that thirsts for you. When you find out the secrets of your books, then I will praise my soul "(St. Augustine).
lectio (1 Kings 17.7 to 16)
17, [7] A few days later the brook dried up, because it did not rain on the region. [8] The Lord spoke to him and said
[9] "Arise, go to Zarephath of Sidon and settle down there. Here I have commanded a widow there to your food." [10] He got up and went to Zarephath. Entered the city gate, here's a widow gathering sticks. He called her and said, "Take some water in a jar that I may drink." [11] As she was going to take it, he shouted: "Take a piece of bread." [12] And she said, "For the life of the Lord thy God, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in the jar and a little oil in and now I pick up two pieces of wood, then I'll go to cook it for me and my son to eat and then die. " [13] And Elijah said, "Do not be afraid and do as you said, but first make a little cake and bring it to me, so I'll prepare for you and your son, [14] because the Lord says: The jar of meal shall not be spent, jug of oil shall not be emptied until the Lord sends rain upon the earth. "[15] she went and did as Elijah said. Ate it, he and her son for several days. [16] The jar of meal was not less, jug of oil fail, according to the word that the Lord had foretold through Elijah.
After presenting the vocation of the prophet Elijah as a burst of God in history that we live in, leaving us when Elijah drank of the brook. "
present the widow of Col Sarephta, there is an introduction of the dry river, drought increases. That 'little' meat bread, water end, and the prophet to continue his ministry, his experience of God must be educated by the poor Sarephta, a city of Phoenicia, and then pagan land.
We walk on tiptoe in this track, with an expression of Paul: "But God chose what is foolish in the world to confound the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what which is low and despised in the world and what is nothing to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast before God "(1 Cor 1.27 to 29).
In these words we can read the vocation of each one of us, even the person who, like Jeremiah, responds the Lord thus: "Ah, Lord God, I can not speak, because they are young" (1.6). It is a weakness that is rewarded, because, as mentioned above, the Lord "does justice to the oppressed, gives food to the hungry [...] protects the stranger, he sustains the orphan and the widow, but thwarts the path of the wicked" ( Sal 146,7.9). From
text we read that the plan is upset Ahab and Elijah found refuge and support along with the widow and her son. The widow
shows mourning clothes, collecting firewood and to the words of the prophet which calls on it to get some water to drink, she is welcoming, it starts moving, the Word same set in motion this poor woman. But the Prophet asked him along with the water even bread.
course now has a fix for the situation that the widow is living with his son: "For the life of the Lord thy God, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in the jar and a little oil in and now I collect two pieces of wood, then I'll go to cook for myself and for my son to eat and die "(v. 12). The prophet comforts her.
The widow is a pagan woman featured in its simplicity and spontaneity in the most difficult despair, is reason for confidence in the word of the prophet, the Word of God so much to put into practice what the prophet says.
Obedience of this woman allowed to precede reason as she was told, everything has allowed the encounter with God, so that eventually, the widow makes his profession of faith: "Now I know you're a man of God and that the word of the Lord is on your lips "(1 Kings 17.24).
This woman becomes a model of obedience, a model of listening to one who received the word with faith, because "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).
The prophet of this pagan experiences at home, the widow of the warmth and solidarity, and the Word, and Charity are not exhausted.
The widow is a symbol of really small, poor (in fact Sareptha is a small town), where everyone can be placed, to find the meaning of his vocation: the love of God and love of neighbor and the prophet, he found meaning to his vocation. The widow
for each of us is an example of shared values \u200b\u200bthat never run out, despite the drought dominant outside.
Even Jesus presents this example of life (cf. Mk 12.41-44, cf. Also Luke 4.25-26), to go to her school: she is like ... Jesus gives all of himself (cf. Lk 10 33-37). Even in this poor woman manifests a call, a gift from the Lord: be a prophet. Indeed, "Whoever welcomes a prophet ... will have the reward of the prophet, and he who receives a right as right will have the reward of the righteous. And whosoever shall give to one cup of cold water auno of these little ones because he is a disciple, verily I say unto you, do not lose his reward "(Mt 10.41-42).
evident from these words that Jesus expects his disciples, his prophets are accepted at home (cf. Lk 4.24-26), but there is a mission that he has received and for which he is willing to offer his life.
In some ways, the widow of Sareptha offers his life, starting by listening to the words of the prophet in the sharing of their lives. The phrase "fear not ..." (V. 13) is the same word of God which passes in the lives of many people who are in the Bible, but also outside of it, because it is the caress of God that touches the heart and call to life and self-giving .
The widow is a sign of God's continuing presence in the history of those who entrust themselves to Him to walk, to accept his word in his own life even when life comes hard, "With all your soul and with all your strength" (Deut. 6:4-5). In the Mishna, part of the Talmud (II century AD), we sketched an answer: "With all my soul" means "even if he rips the soul", that is, until his martyrdom, "with all your strength " means "with all your possessions", ie with all your substances, the widow asked his son, his most valuable asset, as it was for Abraham: "... take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac , is' the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you "(Genesis 22:2).
The widow is the one who trusts in God without reserve nothing for himself and not expecting any miracles from him, because it is capable of playing their lives to God with an attitude of trust, openness and readiness to complete the streets and His providence. She is like the widow of the Gospel that "in her poverty, put everything he had, all she had to live "(Mk 12.43-44) to become an icon of a living faith.
question
1. In your insecurity or condition of misery, find a place to welcome the Word of God?
2. Are you able to obey, preferring reason to what you are asked by the Word of God, to know "the God of Elijah?
3. Are you ready you, like the widow, to share what little they have no difficulty in believing that God cares for the poor?
4. The words "fear not ...", you're ready to respond as the widow with a sort of oath to trust God, who inspires and to guide choices of complete surrender to him?
prayer
In our poverty, Lord, we cry to thee to the extreme of our forces. Thou hast healed, we've raised the soft mud of our condition. Plenty has changed in the first famine, the holy city and its temple are now Zareptha, pagan city. We were alone, alone with our "only children" with no other matters that are drought and hunger. At the height of loneliness, you come and ask us again, "all we have to live."
You knock on the door of our hearts and remind us that only God is the Lord. " We get "the water of affliction and the bread of affliction" and we can not give you anything but "a handful of flour and a little 'oil."
We hear, O Lord, our inability to give the skin it is not like before when we lived in wealth, now the little that we can only "eat it and die."
Fill the jar or the Lord's fragile our lives because we can eat their fill and not fail in your Word.
actio
to act in life you should know that the disciple of the Lord is the one who bears witness not to an abstract ideal but fully adheres to the Gospel according to the teaching of St. Paul: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God unto salvation" (Rom 1.16-17).
