A link to today’s readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/080921.cfm

Today’s First Reading comes for the Book of Deuteronomy, one of the Old Testament books (Hebrew Scriptures) attributed to Moses. In some ways it is easiest to understand Deuteronomy as the last will and testament of Moses as he and the People of Israel stand on the brink of entering the Promised Land; a land Moses would not live to enter.

Deuteronomy is without much of the escape and journey narrative of the Book of Exodus, and can be read almost in the light Moses thinking to himself: “What are things I must say (again) to the People of Israel”. If read in this light, then the words of today’s First Reading take on even greater impact.

Moses starts this discourse with a reminder to the Israelites of who God is, rather than who God can be reduced to:

• “Think! The heavens, even the highest heavens, belong to the LORD, your God, as well as the earth and everything on it”, and
• “For the LORD, your God, is the God of gods, the LORD of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome.”

The Holy One who brought them up out of Egypt, the Holy One who chose them from among all the nations of the world, is not just some ‘friendly chap’ who happens to be on their side, but is indeed the God of the Universe – worthy to be feared, loved, and served with all their hearts and souls!

I worry…it may have moved a little past worry…when I hear discussion/questions that move too quickly, far too quickly, to the applications of faith, before attending to the foundational nature of the revelation of God (brought to fulfilment in Jesus). This rush frequently causes us to miss this call of Moses, picked up and renewed in the Gospels, to first attend to God – not some nice fellow down the road who came up with a great idea about how we might live together, but God!! – with our whole heart and soul, in a spirit of awe and deep reverence.

If we properly attend to the Holy One, then the application will come naturally; in fact, more than simply naturally, but powerfully. We are not called to do acts on God’s behalf, but to live in the world with, in, and through God. However, we can only truly be about the actions that God asks of us (‘to befriend the alien’) when we first attend to the God who is “mighty and awesome”.

To do less than this risks the agenda of my/our actions being ‘mine’ or ‘ours’, and not the not the will of the One to whom we pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is heaven”.