St Paul speaks to us today about God’s plan for humanity, his ‘economy’. In Spanish speaking countries the bursar or procurator of a monastery is often called the economo. He is the person who ensures the smooth running of the material side of monastic life. St Benedict associates his work very closely with the worship of the monastery, saying that all that belongs to the community is to be treated with the same reverence as the sacred vessels of the altar. The bursar himself is to be like a father to the whole community. God the Father is the great Economo, he is the Steward who is working on a plan for the fulness of time, which has now arrived. The Incarnation has inaugurated the time of greater grace, in which we are granted to grow in knowledge of God through the sealing with the Holy Spirit which has been granted us.
The first reading shows us the rejection of God’s plan by the civil and religious
powers of Israel, the unfaithful northern kingdom of the Jews. A refusal to listen.
The gospel, in complete contrast, shows us the apostles, the first to listen to the Word of God, being sent out to preach and to cast out demons and to heal. They did just that: by preaching repentance they also healed spiritual sickness
Each member of the Church, each one of us is a steward of God’s grace. The Holy Spirit enables us to recognise how we are stewards, what the gifts are that God has granted us. We have all received the Holy Spirit, who is fashioning us in the likeness of the Beloved Son. We know this because we are able to respond to the preaching of the apostles and repent, to ask for forgiveness, to forgive so that we may receive forgiveness.
God’s grace comes to us where we are, takes as we are. His every action, the inspirations of grace, answers to our prayers, all take place at the moment that is best for us and for the Church. Our part is to be humble and submissive to God: to strive for holiness by being like clay in the hands of a potter. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to be the moisture that keeps the clay tractable. We are to be patient, too, recognising that we are creatures, waiting on God. The fact that soldiers have to endure months of waiting before they go into action does not mean that they are anything less than fully committed to their cause.
Above all, let us always be full of gratitude to our Creator for the wonder of our being, our human nature. This nature, which the Son of God took to himself, is to be saved: the Incarnation is the foundation of our invincible hope for grace and for glory. Through the mystery we are celebrating we pray that we may become sharers of his divinity who humbled himself to share in our humanity. We are weak and incomplete, sinful and ignorant: recognising this we open to God’s work in us, for we are called to be sharers in the divine nature, to be daughters and sons of God. Even now we are a hymn to his glory.