Fr Mark Schultz

“When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, also the books, and above all the parchments.” 2 Timothy 4:13

Dear Friend,

Happy Feast of Saint Luke! You may already know this, but not only is Luke the author of the Book of Acts and the Gospel that bears his name but, according to legend, Luke wrote (or drew/painted) the first icon of the Virgin Mary from life! It’s likely that this legend grew because of Luke’s focus, in his gospel, on the details of the Annunciation and Nativity, mysteries the other gospels don’t give the same sort of attention…but in Luke, they’re beautifully rendered by a master artist who fills in details with rich poetry and prophecy: the Benedictus, the Magnificat, the Nunc Dimittis, and the beginning of the Gloria in Excelsis.

This attention to prophetic, poetic and personal detail is what draws my attention on this Feast Day. It’s often rather easy to let scripture, theology, religion, ritual, the whole church thing just wash over us, but we’re constantly being invited to pay attention not just to the shape of our faith and the over-all movement of grace in our lives, but to how faith and grace might affect or transform the particularities of our lives and the lives of those around us: how grace desires to touch all aspects of our lives, bless all of our particularity, and make of every bit of us and our lives a window onto the beautifully limitless love of God and a conduit of that love.

It’s nice, then, to see Paul in today's epistle reading from 2 Timothy (appointed not for the Office but for the Mass of the Feast today) being so particularly careful about the mundane details of his life. Nice not because we have any reason to believe he wasn’t customarily so careful, but nice to have this view of the domestic Paul: the Paul who has a favorite cloak that he forgot at a friend’s house; the Paul who was still an avid and voracious learner, despite being a prophet and Apostle. While it might be fun to speculate about what those books and parchments might have been (surely some, likely the parchments, were scripture), what’s beautiful about this little passage is that it fills in our image of Paul’s life and character not through any great sign or miraculous wonder, but through the small things of life, through the apparently inconsequential things. In this verse, we discover (quite literally!) that what’s small and apparently inconsequential is also part of scripture’s sweep, and we’re led to appreciate that those small and apparently inconsequential things are also part of God’s loving concern, also part of grace’s story, also important for giving a clearer picture of what God is doing in the world and in our own lives.

Might there be something in your life that seems small, maybe even ignored or taken for granted, that, if you were to notice it, give it some regard, might prove to be a window onto the love and grace of God? Maybe there are details or aspects of your life that could use the scrutiny of prayer or could stand to be illuminated more brightly by Love’s healing attention in order to more clearly and visibly bear the weight of grace and glory that small things often seem to bear and reveal best. Maybe there’s something in the world, something you’d rather not see or a call to ministry or action that you’d like to avoid that is nonetheless present to you through small loving pulls at your heart’s attention. Maybe now might be a time that you notice a relationship, a person whose presence in your life has opened you to joy in more ways than you’ve allowed yourself to be thankful.

Today, I think we’re invited to pay attention to the little things, invited to see more clearly the pattern of God’s loving action in our lives by noticing the pattern’s details, how important they are to filling in and fleshing out the whole picture, discovering in these small details the graceful artistry of the great Artist who has blessed and woven together the particularity of our own life and the particularities of the lives of those around us with the Incarnate particularity of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ.

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+