This very day the Lord your God is commanding you to observe these statutes and ordinances; so observe them diligently with all your heart and with all your soul. Today you have obtained the Lord’s agreement: to be your God; and for you to walk in his ways, to keep his statutes, his commandments, and his ordinances, and to obey him.
Today the Lord has obtained your agreement: to be his treasured people, as he promised you, and to keep his commandments; for him to set you high above all nations that he has made, in praise and in fame and in honor; and for you to be a people holy to the Lord your God, as he promised.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
There is a significant difference between a wedding and a marriage. Weddings are an event. It’s a day you prepare for. On that day, you make a commitment to accompany another person throughout the rest of your days.
Marriage, of course, is where that commitment gets hashed out in the nitty-gritty reality of everyday life. But that wedding day commitment—the words spoken and the sentiment exchanged—is not something that is left in the past. No, it is something that is continually renewed each and every day.
So, too, is God’s agreement in today’s readings. Sometimes we forget that our mutual commitment to God is continually renewed through the living out of our faith each day. It isn’t something we leave in some past conversion moment, in the font of Baptism or the oil of Confirmation. Faith, like marriage, is the living out of a promise.
—Eric Clayton is a senior communications manager at the Jesuit Conference.
Good and gracious God, we want to live out our discipleship of you every day. We know that some days are easier than others to follow you, and we ask you to strengthen our faith as we continue on our journey. Help us to live out our promise to you each day. Amen.
—The Jesuit Prayer team
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