I love the contrasting images in the reading from Ezekiel: First, a scroll with “lamentation and wailing and woe” written all over it; and second, this same scroll tasting “as sweet as honey” in Ezekiel’s mouth. Wouldn’t such negative words taste bitter?
When God’s Word moves through us, there is an inner peace — a sweetness — which is able to eclipse whatever distasteful tasks we must undergo. They do not come often for me, but I have had wonderfully absurd moments of consolation in the midst of bad situations. Like Ezekiel, God gives us the energizing power of the Word to live out our vocations in the midst of all that comes our way.
For prayer, you might return to a moment of consolation in a time of turbulence, and ask God for gratitude and endurance for the future.
—Michael Lamanna, S.J., a Jesuit scholastic of the U.S. Northeast Jesuit province, just completed his philosophy studies at Loyola University Chicago.