Embracing My Burning Bush

Feast of St. Bonaventure, Bishop, Doctor
Wednesday of Week 15

Today the lectionary gives us Exodus 3:1-6, 9-12, The Burning Bush.  I have to put away my Cecil B. DeMille image and remember the Moses story to this point.  A self-described "alien in a foreign land"; he was a bit homeless.  Born of one woman, raised by another, and then adopted by yet another, I can feel his un-groundedness.  

This is the Bible's inaugural prophetic commissioning story.  Many more follow.  Isaiah, Jeremiah, Jonah, to start.  And then there is Mary at the annunciation.  God meets the unlikely candidate where he/she is, there is questioning, and eventually the call of God and human cooperation (reluctant as it may be) work together for the good.

The Bible tells this type of story, I think, because its true, and confirmed in human experience.  Human persons are not puppets on strings.  There is always a dance; a call and response between creature and creator.  I have a prophetic commissioning as I was baptized "priest, prophet, and king!"  Is my burning bush a bit like my restless heart?  Is it both magnetically attracting me and frightening me at the same time?  Trusting in God's confidence in me…that's tough…especially if God thinks I can bring a WHOLE people out of slavery!

May the direction of my prophetic commissioning be evident and embraced!

…and a quick nod to St. Bonaventure.  At the time of St. Bonaventure the Franciscans were still a pesky force for reform in the church with their obvious poverty and disdain for institutional rigamarole.  And yet Bonaventure still fit in to the church's structure as theologian (and friend of St Thomas),  and Bishop.  That's what the church needs, I think.  More persons who can stand among and between, speaking wisdom and prudence…the antithesis of an ideologue.  St. Bonaventure pray for us!