Sister Eloise Rosenblatt

In Numbers, Moses feels overwhelmed by his responsibilities for a restive people in the desert. He begs God for help. God’s response could have been thunder and lightning, to awe the Israelites into submission, so they would stop complaining or interfering, and passively surrender to Moses’ decision-making.

Will we ever be finished with the problems of Adam and Eve in the garden? Eve seems to get the blame, and through her, Eve-women are forever, supposedly, the cause of having brought evil into the world.

That Ash Wednesday, I was cunning. After Mass, before the bell rang for start of school, scores of students, boys, girls, grade levels all mixed, rag-tagged into four lines in back of church, then rambled up the center and side aisles to get their ashes.

We can romanticize the response of Samuel. He hears a call in the night and responds, “Here I am.” The standard spiritual reflection is, “How can I respond to the call of God? How can I be obedient like Samuel?”