Memorial of Saint Agnes, Virgin and Martyr
“The battle is the LORD’s and he shall deliver you into our hands.”
This cry of young David, facing the giant, the experienced fighter, Goliath, can be for us an image of the enemies of our interior life – thoughts of all kinds that plague us. Whether these thoughts be judgmental, sexual, jealous, fearful, or whatever thoughts have to we fight, they stand for a kind of superior enemy which faces us at very close range. Like David, we are faced with an enemy that wants to kill us.
The first verse used in today’s responsorial psalm, taken from Psalm 144, puts it well for us: “Blessed be the LORD, my rock, who trains my hands for battle, my fingers for war.”
This training the disciple of Christ receives by living from Christ’s daily nourishment. This nourishment comes to us in the Eucharist when we are favored with it daily either in mass or adoration. It comes to us in our tasting God’s unique word to us in praying the Scriptures, lectio divina, and this nourishment gets lived out in the many instances of our willingness to cooperate with God’s graces, given us in opportunities such as for patience, or courage, or acts of kindness in word or deed, etc. In all these instances in our daily lives, we come to know that “the battle is the LORD’s and he is training “my hands for battle.”
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Ordinary Time, Daily Reflections