Enough Exile Already

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For 7 April 2020, Tuesday of Holy Week, based on Isaiah 49:1-6

   Listen to me, O coastlands,
pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The LORD called me before I was born,
while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow,
in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will be glorified.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain,
I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the LORD,
and my reward with my God.”
 
   And now the LORD says,
who formed me in the womb to be his servant,
to bring Jacob back to him,
and that Israel might be gathered to him,
for I am honored in the sight of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength—
he says,
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
 


Scripture passage from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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About Deborah Wilhelm

Dr. Deborah Wilhelm is an Adjunct Professor of Preaching and Evangelization at the Aquinas Institute of Theology and a lecturer in theology at the Loyola New Orleans Institute for Ministry. Her most recent book is Preaching Racial Justice, which she edited with Fr. Gregory Heille and Fr. Maurice Nutt. An active preacher, teacher, writer, retreat leader, and Camaldolese Benedictine Oblate, she lives and prays among the rivers, trees, and blackberry vines of rural Oregon.