"The Meat Cutter": A Reflection on the Second Reading for October 14th, 2018: Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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Hebrews 4:12-13 

Indeed, the word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart. No creature is concealed from him, but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must render an account. Jesus, Compassionate High Priest.

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For some years now, I have been on the team leading the Life’s Healing Choices program at Saint Benedict Parish. The goal of this program is to begin healing our deep and sometimes long-buried hurts, habits and hang ups through dialogue, prayer, journaling and Scripture reflection.

As a team, we often marvel that, even though we’ve guided others through this program time and again, we never fail to discover new or newer depths of hurts we thought were healed in our own selves every time we facilitate the course. That is truly the work of God, who longs to bring light, air and health to the decay of our destructive habits, debilitating hang ups and unhealed wounds.

Before joining the team, I went through the course as a participant. It was then I first began to think of my hurts and hang ups as meat—square slabs, bound tightly in plastic wrap and stacked in tidy columns in a big Rubbermaid Roughtote™. Each raw slab represented a hurtful experience from my life, which I had sealed up and hidden away. My goal for the Life’s Healing Choices program was to peel the lid off the Roughtote™ and start opening the packages one by one, identifying them and giving them over to God, who would help me deal with them.

This image is what immediately came to mind when I read this Sunday’s second reading from 2 Hebrews:

the word of God is living and effective,
sharper than any two-edged sword,
penetrating … and able to discern …
thoughts of the heart.
No[thing] is concealed from him,
but everything is naked and exposed to the eyes of him
to whom we must render an account.

The Word of God is a sword. Its edges are sharp and its tip is piercing. Like a surgeon’s scalpel, it cuts cleanly and with precision through to our depths, exposing the malignancy hidden within. Laying it open, the Word cuts away all that is decaying and fatal and prescribes a remedy to promote healing and lasting health.

Jesus is the Divine Physician. There is a place in my heart where hurts, habits and hang ups are hidden, tightly wrapped and stacked in columns, passively waiting to be dealt with. For years I kept a lid on them, but I carried the weight of them all the same.

Through Life’s Healing Choices I acquired the courage to begin examining them in the light of God’s Word, which is not static and passive but dynamic, interactive and transformative.

Christ knows what is in me; He knows what is in all of us. I have no reason to hide my weakness and debility from Him. Rather, only by exposing my weaknesses to the Lord and allowing Him to cut away all that is dying and dead, will I grow to greater health.

​Donna Davis

"God... longs to bring light, air and health to the decay of our destructive habits, debilitating hang ups and unhealed wounds."
​- Donna Davis (Ora Reflections)

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