Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
When the time comes to exit the scene, you can do so gracefully, or you can be dragged out, kicking and screaming. Christ did not end his life kicking and screaming. He gracefully accepted the Father’s will, shared a last supper with his apostles, carried his cross, and commended his spirit to God.
The patriarch Isaac, the son of Abraham, made a decision to bow out gracefully from this world. He asked his first-born son, Esau, to hunt some game and prepare a meal for him, promising him a solemn blessing after the meal. Isaac was tricked, though, by his wife, Rebekah, into giving his blessing to his other son, Jacob. The blessing was meant to be Jacob’s way of bowing out gracefully, and it could not be retracted or repeated.
If you look up the Hebrew word for “blessing” that Isaac would have been using, ברך, brk, you will see that the word originally meant “to bow” or “to bend.” To bless someone meant to bend the knee to them or to bow to them. Thus, Isaac, if not literally bowing himself to his son, wanted to “bow out” to him. Isaac did not want to leave kicking and screaming, but rather, to make a graceful departure from this world.
For us, today, that means bowing out to God, commending ourselves into God’s hands, for ever and ever. Amen.