Skip to main content
  • Vocations
  • Associates
  • Shrine
Society of the Sacred Heart, US – Canada Province
  • Home
  • Menu
    • RSCJ.org
    • Associates
    • Vocations
    • Shrine

    • Who We Are
      • Overview
      • Our mission
      • Our guiding calls
      • Our internationality
      • Our provincial leadership
      • Our related organizations
      • Our heritage and traditions
    • Our Mission Lived
      • Overview
      • Education
      • Spirituality
        • Overview
        • Spirituality Centers
        • Children of Mary
      • Justice
        • Overview
        • Stuart Center
        • Ethical investing
        • Healthy Waters
      • Community
        • Overview
        • Welcoming communities
        • RSCJ retirement communities
      • Young Adult Ministry
      • Duchesne Fund
    • Connect
      • Become an Associate
      • Become a Sister
      • Join our mailing list
      • Find an RSCJ
      • Request a prayer
    • Ways to give
    • Resources
      • Our spiritual library
      • Publications
      • Heart magazine
      • Revealing God's Love in the Midst of Uncertainty
      • RSCJ Blogs
      • Quotes from RSCJ
    • Our History
      • Overview
      • History of Enslavement
      • Key figures
      • Archives
      • Miracle at Grand Coteau
      • New Province Foundations
    • News
    • In Memoriam
  • Donate
  • Login

Third Sunday of Lent reflection

Lent 2022

By Kimberly M. King, RSCJ 

First Reading of the Third Sunday of Lent - Year C: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15

“As he looked on, he was surprised to see that the bush, though on fire, was not consumed.”

The news of late has me asking before each broadcast, “How bad will it be?” I wish the question were otherwise, but if I am honest, that is the first thing I wonder. At the same time, I take walks through the neighborhood and am greeted by buds, shoots, and exuberantly affectionate canines. A steady exclusive diet of one or the other, the beautiful or the terrible, leaves me feeling off balance, because experience has taught me that living with the “both-and” is what is most true…that sense of living within the blend of contradictions that comprise the sacrament of the present moment. The world is large, and it contains multitudes, to paraphrase Walt Whitman.

The desert is large too, and contains multitudes…all is not necessarily only as it seems at first blush. How many people must have passed by a certain conflagration in the desert and thought Enh, another bush gone. Moses, though, he stopped. And, he stayed long enough to notice that there was more going on. Yes, it was on fire; but it was not being consumed. It was burning, and it was still bush…both-and…flaming contradiction that is undeniably real. And where was God? Smack in the midst of it, proclaiming God’s presence and inviting Moses to remove his sandals, because where that fullness is taken in, where the seemingly incongruous is accepted as what Is…there is Holy Ground.

I love that God appeared in the midst of both-and, in the midst of what doesn’t look wholly like one thing or another but something else entirely, because it reminds me that God is right there in the middle of the world that is like that too. Whether that world is the exterior world where bombs drop, people flee, grandmothers protest, and dogs waggle and shimmy their pleasure at well placed scratches…Or whether it is the interior world, where I think and feel so many different things that may or may not fit together into a mosaic of coherent sense.

We walk with Holy Ground within us; we walk upon Holy Ground outside of us. That hem of light where the beautiful and the terrible meet, there is our God.

Image: Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

 

  • play
  • pause
  • stop
  • mute
  • unmute
  • Third Sunday of Lent reflection (Audio)
Share this:
  • facebook
  • twitter
  • linkedin
  • whatsapp
  • email

The Latest

Image by Ilya Kantakov from Pixabay

Opening our Tents

May 12, 2025
Photo by Shot by Cerqueira on Unsplash

Resurrection Power

April 29, 2025

Living Solidarity

April 16, 2025

Follow us

Society of the Sacred Heart

4120 Forest Park Avenue | St. Louis, MO 63108
314.652.1500 | 314.534.6800 fax
EIN: 43-1272049

© RSCJ.org | Email | Translate
Sitemap

Who We Are

Overview

Our mission

Our guiding calls

Our internationality

Our provincial leadership

Our related organizations

Our heritage and traditions

Our Mission Lived

Overview

Education

Spirituality

Overview
Spirituality Centers
Children of Mary

Justice

Overview
Stuart Center
Ethical investing
Healthy Waters

Community

Overview
Welcoming communities
RSCJ retirement communities

Young Adult Ministry

Duchesne Fund

Connect

Become an Associate

Become a Sister

Join our mailing list

Find an RSCJ

Request a prayer

Ways to give

Resources

Our spiritual library

Publications

Heart magazine

Revealing God's Love in the Midst of Uncertainty

RSCJ Blogs

Quotes from RSCJ

Our History

Overview

History of Enslavement

Key figures

Archives

Miracle at Grand Coteau

New Province Foundations

News

In Memoriam

Copyright © RSCJ.org | Web design