Tuesday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lord tells Elijah: go to Ahab in Naboth's vineyard; say have you murdered and also taken possession? Dogs shall lick your blood where they licked Naboth's; Ahab: have you found me out my enemy? Yes - because you gave yourself up to evil; I bring evil on you; will destroy and cut off every male in Ahab's line; dogs shall eat Jezebel; Ahab heard; tore clothes put on sackcloth fasted lay in sackcloth went about dejectedly; Lord: have you seen how Ahab has humbled himself? Because he humbled himself I will not bring the evil in his time; in his son's time. Have mercy on me O God; against you alone I sinned; create clean heart; restore joy of your salvation. You have heard love your neighbor hate your enemy; but I say love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so you may be children of your Father; sun rises on bad and good rain on just and unjust; if you love only those who love you what recompense? Tax collectors do that; be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

The Lord sends Elijah to Ahab in Naboth's vineyard to pronounce judgment: after murdering have you also taken possession? Dogs will lick your blood; I will bring evil on you and your line. Ahab responds: have you found me out, my enemy? Yes, says Elijah. But then Ahab tears his clothes, fasts, puts on sackcloth, and goes about dejectedly. The Lord tells Elijah: because Ahab has humbled himself I will not bring the evil in his time but in his son's time. The psalm: have mercy on me O God; against you alone I sinned; create in me a clean heart; restore the joy of your salvation. In the Gospel, Jesus gives the sixth antithesis: love your enemies and pray for your persecutors so you may be children of the Father who makes sun and rain fall on all alike; the love that loves only back is no more than tax collectors manage; be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

DEACON/PRIEST: Lord Jesus, you call us to the Father's perfection - the complete love that reaches the enemy as it reaches the neighbor, that gives sun and rain to all alike. PEOPLE: Lord, have mercy.

DEACON/PRIEST: Christ Jesus, through Ahab's sackcloth you show us that even the person who gave themselves up to evil can humble themselves, and the mercy responds. PEOPLE: Christ, have mercy.

DEACON/PRIEST: Lord Jesus, create in us clean hearts - the purified interior that prays for enemies not as a formula but as the genuine seeking of their good. PEOPLE: Lord, have mercy.

PRIEST: Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. Let us bring our prayers before the God whose mercy even met Ahab's sackcloth.

DEACON/LECTOR:

1. That bishops, priests, and deacons would preach the Father's completeness of love - reaching enemies as well as neighbors - and live it before they preach it, we pray to the Lord.
2. For those who have been wronged and are practicing the prayer for the wrongdoer's sackcloth, that the practice would deepen from formula to genuine desire for the other's conversion, we pray to the Lord.
3. Where evil has been given into without the repentance yet coming, that Elijah would arrive and the prophet's word would be heard before the judgment falls on the next generation, we pray to the Lord.
4. For those who need a clean heart before they can honestly pray for the person who has wronged them - who need the Psalm 51 interior before the Matthew 5 exterior - we pray to the Lord.
5. In this Sacred Heart month, for the heart that prayed Father forgive them as it was being crucified, we pray to the Lord.
6. Into the mercy that met even Ahab's sackcloth, we commend our faithful departed - loved to the end by the Father's uncalibrated sun, we pray to the Lord.

PRIEST: Lord, even Ahab. Even the one who ordered the murder and took the vineyard got the mercy when the sackcloth came. Let this parish be people who pray for the sackcloth of those who have wronged us, and who keep the possibility of their humbling alive with the prayer. Sacred Heart of Jesus, we trust in you. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.