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Rector's Study
SUMMER LOVE
School starts back, and though it is still quite hot, the pace of living seems always to increase. The summer break is coming to an end, so it feels as if summer itself must cool into autumn. Would God it were so!
As I've reflected on the change of pace that signals the end of the warmer time of year in which I always believe things should and wish things would slow down more than they do, I have wanted to have some good Word of the Lord to declare for our benefit and blessing. So, as is my custom, I have turned to Holy Scripture. Here is what I found:
"The harvest is past, the summer is ended.
and we are not saved.
For the wound of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded,
I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me."
These word from the prophecy of Jeremiah, the eighth chapter, are part of the oracle of judgment of Judah that then continues with the memorable phrase:
"Is there no balm in Gilead?"
Lately, it seems that I have spending a lot of time with those who are struggling, who are wounded by life. These loved ones who the prophet would call "the daughter of my people are wounded;" and in communion with them, I too feel a wound to my own heart. Wounds of disease, depression, of anger, of frustration, of guilt, and of so many other things from which we desire to be saved assault us.
"Summer is ended, and we are not saved," our souls may cry.
But, as we sing in the familiar spiritual. "There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole... to heal the sin sick soul..." That balm is "the love of Jesus," a love so deep and broad as to hold claim over the entirety of our existence. To the Galatians, St. Paul put it like this:
"The life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me."
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Timothy P. Perkins  , SSC
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