|
Reflections
for Sunday, September 9, 2012
What a wonderful God we have! What a wonderful Lord God we have in Jesus
Christ! Jesus wants us to live. Jesus wants us to live fully in this life
with the freedom of children of the Kingdom.
Isaiah tells us in the first reading not to be fearful. So often fear can
hold us back and keep us from kingdom living. We get worried about what
others might think. We get stopped by our own fears. We wonder if we will
have the strength to continue on the road of the Gospel when it costs us a
lot.
The Letter of James today tells us to love everyone and not to make
distinctions. That is easy to say, but most of us just naturally gravitate
to the clean, the beautiful, the normal and the well to do. Saint Benedict
in his Rule for Monks acknowledges this sort of natural impulse and then
tells his monks to treat everyone the way they would treat the wealthy and
the powerful.
Every community of people has oddballs and fringe people. We are invited
to love them all and to heal them by our love for them. Just as Jesus
allowed the deaf mean to speak in the Gospel today, so also we must help
the fringe people have a voice in our communities, in our parishes and in
our religious communities. There are so many ways in which we can invite
those without a voice to have a voice.
So also we can help the deaf to hear. That is more difficult because we
ourselves are often the deaf. We do not listen to others and so we are
deaf. How can we listen to the marginalized, the fringe people, the
oddballs, unless we associate with them and spend time with them. Our Lord
Jesus lived that way. He was known to associate with sinners and
prostitutes.
My sisters and brothers, we are invited to change our lives. We are
invited to leave the comfort zones in which we live. We are invited to
associate with the poor and the needy. This invitation comes to us from
the Lord Jesus Christ and He promises us that if we live this way, the
Kingdom is ours.
Readings of the day:
First Reading: Isaiah 35.4-7
Second Reading: James 2.1-5
Gospel: Mark 7.31-37
| |
Reflections are available for the following Sundays:
|
