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William Manaker S.J.Feb 4, 2025 12:45:00 AM1 min read

4 February 2025

Tuesday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

In today’s liturgy, we pray the final section of Psalm 22, which begins,

All the ends of the earth
shall remember and turn to the LORD;
All the families of the nations
shall bow down before him.

These words capture the audacity of our Christian hope: that at the end of time, not just some select members of humanity, but all the ends of the earth… and all the families of the nations will come to know and worship God. This hope is even more striking when we consider the opening lines of Psalm 22, quoted by Jesus on the Cross: My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? It is a stunning change, to move from a sense of abandonment and near-hopelessness to a declaration that all the earth will turn toward God. Yet such is the hope of ancient Israel, inherited and proclaimed to the world by the Christian church.

Only an encounter with the living God can accomplish such a radical change in our hearts. Jesus, the one who in today’s Gospel heals the woman with the flow of blood and raises a little girl to life, who endured the cross, despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God, is able to give hope through his Holy Spirit to hearts gripped by despair.

Today, let us ask to encounter this Lord who comes to us in the power of the Spirit, that he might renew our hearts and transform them in hope.

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