This week’s readings say to me that God’s wisdom, born of God’s unconditional, self-emptying love transcends gender, time, and even death. It’s alive, a guiding light and a relationship sought and found through alertness, preparation, perseverance and patience. It can’t be faked or borrowed and returned. It has to be kept and nurtured. The path to it cannot be rushed, and the process of encountering and journeying with it comes with a cost that’s worth paying to make it my own. Knowing and not knowing it affect my mind, body, and soul. Being open to it, living with it, and following words leads would make me the undistorted version of myself, while closing my mind, body, and soul to it would leave me lonely and unrecognizable to anyone acquainted with the best version of me.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Until the evening two days ago, I was traveling, and I got sick at both the beginning and the end of my trip. Then I came to my desk to work on this post yesterday. I didn’t feel like moving a muscle, and congestion meant talking to my dictation software wasn’t as comfortable as usual, not to mention that the software probably wouldn’t have understood me as well as it usually does. I set my timer, and when it went off, only the headings and the locations of the Scripture passages had been added to this post. I decided to spend the rest of the day catching up on shows I missed while I was gone and playing games on my phone. And when I got up this morning, I still felt like I had nothing to offer.
As I write, I’m wrestling with doubts that anything I put in this post will feed you intellectually, spiritually, or emotionally. If something I’ve included here does resonate with you, I’d be interested to know what, if you’d like to share a comment.
But also as I write this after sitting with the readings, I’m reminded that it isn’t I who do the feeding. It’s God. I have only to desire God’s wisdom and to take one step at a time to prepare for and to receive its movement.
Come to me, Oil for my lamp, Wisdom of God. Give me the wisdom to recognize You so You can recognize in me the person I am in You. Amen.
This week’s readings praise and honor God and advocate for my never ceasing to do the same. They also remind me that everyone and everything exists because of God’s power and with God’s consent. Without this power and consent, nothing would exist and nothing would be held together. But there is life, and there is relationship because God is life and relationship. There is life through relationship to God and one another.
The third reading continues to praise God while also highlighting the relationality of life in God. It also highlights how virtues are related to one another, saying:
We [Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy]give thanks to Godalways for all of you, remembering you in our prayers, unceasingly calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and Father, knowing, brothers and sisters loved by God, how you were chosen.
1 Thessalonians 2-4 [italics mine]
While nothing exists without God allowing it to, God wants us to love freely, and anything not done freely isn’t done in the love, so God doesn’t force us to bend to the Divine will. God gives us the freedom to be co-creators. The result of this freedom is that God isn’t the creator of everything. Some things are created by the tempter and accuser. Others are created by humans. We can use the things humans have created for good or ill.
Upon this reading of the Gospel passage, I feel like Jesus is asking me to think about what I value and to ask God to help me value my life-giving relationships more than the things I can use to benefit those relationships. It also challenges me to discern how the things I use affect my relationships with God and others. To what extent are these effects positive and negative?
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Lord, grant me the grace to recognize what belongs to you and to employ it to bring myself and others into union with you. Give me a deep awareness that this union is the source of all beauty, growth, and peace. Help me to remember to thank you for inviting everyone to share these gifts. Thank you, Lord. Amen.
This week’s readings and Casey Stanton’s reflection on them offer me five different lenses through which to find hope. I’ve heard the spiritual understanding of hope defined as “joyful expectation.” I’m not sure who I received this understanding from — maybe my spiritual director. So if you’re reading this, and you shared this understanding with me — thanks — because that understanding of hope comes to mind as I read this week’s readings.
The Old Testament reading gives me a glimpse of the future — when everything reflects nothing but God’s nature, which is love, and which I sometimes grasp partially — as justice and mercy — with the line between the two virtues being indistinct because one can’t be separated from the other. This reading contains one of those verses familiar both to people with a lot of background in Scripture and without that background. The verse says:
The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face; the reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken.
Isaiah 25:8
The psalm this week is also familiar favorite, Psalm 23. As I’ve written in a series on this blog, I see this psalm as a proclamation of faith and a promise, and faith and promises are founded on the joyful expectation that is hope. If you’d like to visit or revisit that series, it starts here.
The third reading tells me that holding onto hope allows a person to maintain trust in God’s love regardless of what his or her circumstances are. The third reading also includes a verse that can be helpful for inspiring hope:
I can do all things in him who strengthens me.
Philippians 12:13
Now no one is called to do everything. Rather, we’re called to have hope and faith that we can do what each of us is called to do. Each of our vocations involves some activities and experiences that others also share in and other activities and experiences that are unique to each of us. So the third reading urges me to have confidence that when I trust in God, I’ll be able to do and be what I’m called to do and be, whether I find myself in pleasant or unpleasant circumstances. This message gives me hope.
As I read this week’s Gospel passage with the theme of hope in mind, its words remind me that authentic hope comes from accepting God’s invitation to a healthy relationship with God and one another. Hope comes from viewing whatever I do in terms of how it contributes to the health of those relationships. Nothing I do or want can replace a healthy relationship with God, and I can’t have healthy relationships with others, or with my goals if I don’t have healthy relationship with God.
The passage also tells me that an authentic — a.k.a. healthy — relationship with God can’t be faked. Hope can’t be faked either — at least not in the eyes of God. This is important to keep in mind because it’s authentic hope that solves problems and allows for harmony with one another and with God.
Lord, please strengthen my hope; help me cling to it regardless of my circumstances. Amen.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
While I looked at the Gospel passage as I considered the theme of hope, I’ll be honest — I’m bothered by the amount of violence the featured parable includes. So was Casey Stanton. Then some current events inspired her to relate to the parable differently than she had before. Click here to find out how.
Beyond this week’s readings:
Ms. Staton reflects on events unfolding in the Catholic Church. Her reflection prompts me to ask how a listening and sharing approach to relating to others, how an attitude of stillness and openness with regard to my circumstances, can be lived outside those events. Lord, open my senses, my heart, and my soul. Amen.
Work cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 15 October 2023 28th Sunday in Ordinary time: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.181, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 8 Aug. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
This week’s readings use the imagery of the vineyard to illustrate what cooperation with and lack of cooperation with God looks like. The first reading looks at the vineyard of Divine will and work from God’s perspective, while the second looks at this vineyard from the perspective of a child of God. The third reading, the epistle, gives advice on how to cooperate with God, saying:
. . . whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Phil 4:8
The tenants in the Gospel parable don’t live by instruction like that given in Philippians 4:8. They seem to be impatient, greedy, and even violent in their pursuit of what they want.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Carmen Ramos reflects on this week’s readings by focusing as much on the experience of the servants in the parable as on the experience of the tenants. She closes her reflection with some questions to bring to prayer. These questions, which follow are helpful for living the lessons of this week’s readings.
Beyond this week’s readings:
You have been given the gift of dignity; you have a purpose in this world. Do you acknowledge it?
You are baptized; you have a stake in this Church. Will you claim it?
Were you rejected for speaking the truth? You are an heir to the Kingdom. Will you build it?
Carmen Ramos
To me, it feels easiest to answer “yes” to the first question, but am I fully understanding and responding to what my purpose is? Probably not. As the days grow shorter, I feel like I have less energy to recognize and to live that purpose and to feel like I have that “stake in this Church.” This experience seems ironic — even as I don’t think I’m alone in having it — because wouldn’t it make sense for harvest time, more than any other time, to bear fruit?
Have I been “rejected for speaking the truth?” Maybe sometimes, but when I was rejected, was I really speaking the truth, or was I instead speaking fear or anger masquerading as the truth? And when did I let fear keep me from speaking at all?
Lord, energize me with the Spirit so that I say “yes” to helping to “build” the Kingdom Ms. Ramos reminds me about. Energize me so I can get to work on the action that accompanies that “yes.” Help me to remember that what the epistle encourages me to think about isn’t always easy or pleasant, and yet these things are sources of truth. They can be the sources of energy behind my “yes and the actions that accompany it. Amen.
Work cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 8 October 2023 27th Sunday in Ordinary time: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.181, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 8 Aug. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
. . . humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others.
Philippians 2:3
I think this clause ties together this week’s readings. It takes humility to trust and to be in harmony with others and God and to be at peace when situations don’t go the way I want them to. So far, I’m sorry to say, I don’t seem to have given the virtue of humility the upper hand in my life.
The first reading tells me that if I did, I wouldn’t complain to God that what happens to me is unfair. My vision doesn’t have the expanse that God’s vision does, so who am I to make a judgment about what someone else deserves and what I deserve. When I cooperate with God, God lives in me and works through me. When I don’t, the Holy Spirit has to carve an alternate path within and around me. And even when I cooperate, I do so only with the help of the Holy Spirit. I wouldn’t be alive without the Spirit, and so I don’t deserve anything.
I don’t say this to be negative and self-effacing. Another way to frame this sentiment would be to say that there is nothing that I alone am entitled to. I have dignity because I live, and I live because of God. So does every other living thing. Every living thing lives because God’s nature is relationship, and relationship requires more than one. That’s why I’m thinking that I don’t deserve anything. I may or may not be prevented from receiving something good by one factor or another. Sometimes that factor is me; sometimes it isn’t, and my perception of what would be good for me is often distorted and is always limited. Given this distortion and limitation, how can I say what I or anyone else deserves?
One part of the Good News is that God doesn’t operate in terms of what’s deserved. I didn’t need to deserve to live before I came into being. And if I humble myself, God doesn’t let any negative consequences that may spring from my actions or anyone else’s to destroy me. Instead, if I ask Him and accept the crosses that will come with the answer, He’ll show me how to turn unpleasant or even painful consequences into something positive — in other words — in other words something that cooperates with His will, Hs work. As the psalm puts it, He guides the humble to justice / and teaches the humble his way (Psalm 25:9).
Another part of the Good News is that, while God wants us to know that making room for Him in our lives means humbling ourselves, he doesn’t ask us to do it alone. He does it with us. As Philippians tells me:
Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
2:6-11
The Gospel reading offers a lesson in contrasts to teach me how to live with an attitude of humility. It teaches me that to live with an attitude of humility means to understand that no group I belong to and nothing about my past determines whether God works in my life and whether that life reflects God. It’s humility that makes room for God in my life. So if I keep returning to humility, eventually when death puts its fingers on me, its grip won’t be able to contain the truth and power of who I am in God. For me, this image of the fingers and the grip unable to stay closed is one way of thinking about eternal life. I saw a quote on the Hallow app today that gave me another way of thinking about eternal life. The quote advises me to:
Begin now to be what you will be hereafter.
St. Jerome.
Lord, help me to remember that intentions and plans mean nothing and do nothing if they aren’t put into action — and not just in the future but now. After all, though I can’t understand how, for You, everything is happening now. Help me to live in union with You and Your other children, not just some time today but at this moment and in the next. Amen.
Works cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 1 October 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.182, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 21 Sep. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
This week’s readings prompt me to imagine a high wall with a door in it. I’m on one side of that door, and God is on the other. God is knocking, asking me to open that door, to come in and work in the parts of God’s vineyard that occupy the space outside my body and soul. Opening this door will also allow God to work in the parts of the vineyard that God placed within my body and soul. God planted the vineyard, and the human tendency to sin created the weeds in the vineyard and the wall around it. This tendency also created walls within it. These are the walls of pride, anger, and envy.
I couldn’t enter the vineyard, and God couldn’t enter the vineyard of my body and soul if God hadn’t created doors into both. Why? Because “[God’s] thoughts are not [my] thoughts, nor are [my] ways [God’s] ways” (Isa. 55:8). The psalm goes so far as to describe God’s “grandeur” as “unsearchable” (Psalm 145:3). Yet God has created doors so that if I let God move freely in in the vineyards within and around me, whether I live or die, I won’t do so alone, but with God. And if I live or die with God, I do so for God and in God, as the end of Philippians 1:20 says.
The same door stands that stands between me and God stands between God and everyone else. It’s up to each of us how wide we open that door. What can be found through that opening is the same for everyone, regardless of when each person opens the door while he or she lives on this earth. Once we no longer live on this earth, we live on, we are eternal, in God to the extent that we have allowed God, the Eternal, to live in us.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
In Darlene Jasso’s reflection on this week’s readings, she asks how our world would be different if we treated each other the way God treats us. As last week’s readings told us, God doesn’t treat us the way we sometimes treat God and each other. God doesn’t draw close to us only when He asks something of us or only in difficult times. God doesn’t give us back only what we give to God. God withholds no part of Himself that we are open to receiving.
Beyond this week’s readings:
Ms. Jasso makes important and thought-provoking points about God and us. She says God shows everyone the same generosity. This truth can be difficult to keep in mind. I don’t know about you, but when I don’t make a conscious effort to alter my mindset, I tend to think that God loves and answers the prayers of the people who do the things that God wants when He wants and doesn’t do the same for the people who don’t do what He wants.
And it’s a worthy ideal for me to show everyone the same generosity. I suppose the true ideal would be to withhold nothing good from anyone. It’s easiest to want to do this with nonmaterial goods, such as justice and mercy. But my mind can’t quite ignore that what the landowner in the parable offers is monetary payment.
I realize that parables are highly metaphorical, that what the landowner, who represents God, gives represents more than money. Yet parables also don’t shy away from teaching us about what we should do with our material goods — material goods that none of us have an unlimited supply. Most of us have far less than an unlimited supply of material goods, and some of our brothers and sisters don’t have even what they need to survive, let alone be healthy.
Imagine if all of us found ourselves in this situation of need. Imagine if we all received the same level of generosity that too many societies show those who like the most basic necessities — which is not enough. On the other hand, what if we showed everyone unlimited material generosity? My human mind says resources would run out, that God has unlimited resources, but the physical world doesn’t. Another preachy voice in my head says that this reality is the reason we need to trust God to supply what we lack. And yet God doesn’t always supply what people lack, materially. Otherwise, food insecurity and famine wouldn’t exist. Yet they do, so God wants us to provide for each other and to share what we have.
God also knows having everything we want wouldn’t be good for us because excess lets us believe that we don’t need God and each other, that what we have is a substitute for interdependency on each other and dependence on God. God also knows that once humans have more than we need, we tend to want even more than that, and the more we have, the more we want, and we tend to confuse what we want what we need and to fear losing what we have wanted and received.
I suppose the realization I’ve come to as I write this post is that generosity means discerning what we truly need versus what we want and sharing what we have but don’t need. That which gives some of us what we want can supply what others need.
God doesn’t need us or any other part of creation, but God wants us, and so He distributes what He doesn’t need — all of creation — among various members of His family.
Lord, help me to discern the difference between what I want and what I need and to share my surpluses. This is the generosity you ask of me. Help me to practice it. Amen.
Work cited
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
The theme of this week’s readings is forgiveness — how it’s God’s nature and why extending it to others is important. The first reading asks me a question: how can I expect forgiveness if I can’t forgive others, especially considering that they are subject to the same weaknesses I struggle with? The second reading offers reassurance, conveying that God isn’t like me. God is “slow to anger” (Ps. 103: 9). God doesn’t “requite us according to our crimes” (103:10). “As far as the east is from the west/so far has he put our transgressions from us” (103: 11). “[S]o surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear him” (103: 13).
Now I don’t believe in being asked to be afraid of God. What I am being asked is to recognize that I’m not God. God shares some knowledge with me, but not all knowledge. God’s ways are not my ways (Isa. 55:8).
The third reading offers a lesson in how to respond to this reality: remember whom you and everyone else around you was created in the image of — God. So I ask God to help that image be reflected in me. The result of allowing God’s image to be reflected in me would be living for God and for others in God rather than for myself. It would mean forgiving others because I want God to forgive me. And He does if I acknowledge my sins to Him. Doing so hands might sin-wounded soul over to Him for healing. Confessing my sins to someone who has been given the ministry of this healing helps me hand my sins over. I’m more likely to struggle with the weight of something when I carry it without the help of someone who is being God’s ears and voice. In the Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable with a tough message for anyone who doesn’t approach the wrongdoings and shortcomings of others with God’s forgiving ears and voice.
Let’s see what someone else has to say about that message.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
Caitlin Morneau’s reflection reminds me that forgiveness isn’t something a person can snap his or her fingers and make happen. It takes a conscious decision to forgive, and then even once the decision to forgive is made, it takes time and effort to put into practice. Her perspective also reminds me that not being able to take that time and make that effort is a punishment in and of itself.
Beyond this week’s readings:
As I typed that last reminder, I wondered if there would be a way to reconcile it with the message of the Gospel reading. I had my doubts. I remembered the message of the Gospel reading being that I needed to forgive others as God has forgiven me, and if I don’t, God won’t forgive me.
I struggled with this understanding because I couldn’t make it mesh with the message I was getting from the psalm. I didn’t expect the tension I was experiencing from the struggle to resolve because, let’s face it, sometimes passages in the Bible just don’t agree with each other. Different scriptures were written at different times. Even within a single culture, understandings of God and God’s will evolve over time, and the differences between passages may reflect that evolution. Different books that are included within the biblical canon were also written with different audiences and purposes in mind. Some of them are poems; some of them are more like folktales. They have morals just like an Aesop’s fable or a Grimm’s fairy tale does. Others have more in common with legal documents than with a poem or a story.
So sometimes the differences between Scripture passages just are what they are, and I have to sit with the tension, the unanswered question, or the challenging lesson, and ask myself what words from a reading session stand out for me on a given day. I use the answer to that question to help me discern what God has to say to me at that moment.
Surprisingly though, when I went back to the Gospel after reading Caitlin Morneau’s reflection, the king in the parable no longer seemed as punitive. It isn’t the king who punishes the servant who doesn’t forgive the debts of others. Rather, the translation I’m using says that the king “handed [the servant] over to torturers (Mat. 18:34) What are the torturers? What is the debt but the effects of unforgiveness on the person who shoulders them?
Unforgiveness might be the sin I struggle with the most. In God I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, Fr. Mark Thibodeaux describes an approach he learned to use to free himself from the torture of unforgiveness:
Adapting the insights from a particular style of psychological therapy called Gestalt, I prayed in my chair with two other chairs in front of me. I sat Jesus in one of those chairs and my offender in the other. With Jesus present, I would say anything that I wanted to my offender. I might yell at him or curse him or tell him all sorts of despicable things. But at the end of my prayer time, I allowed both of my two guests to speak to me as well. At the end of our conversation, regardless of whether my heart felt it or not, I told my offender, “You hurt me, but I forgive you and I love you.” And one beautiful sunny morning, I said it and realized that there was no part of me that didn’t genuinely mean it, not even my heart!
loc. 1149-1157
A book I just finished, Things You Save in a Fire, by Katherine Center, offers other tips for practicing forgiveness:
“Just saying the words ‘I forgive you,’ even to yourself, can be a powerful start…” “Forgiveness is about a mind-set of letting go… “It’s about acknowledging to yourself that someone hurt you, and accepting that… Then it’s about accepting that the person who hurt you is flawed, like all people are, and letting that guide you to a better, more nuanced understanding of what happened. … And then there’s a third part… that involves trying to look at the aftermath of what happened and find ways that you benefited, not just ways you were harmed.”
112
I can imagine some people saying the above approaches and tips aren’t applicable to all situations, and I understand that reaction. All feelings are valid. It’s what we do with them, and what we let them do to us that matters. No one’s journey is exactly the same, and everyone’s journey unfolds at a different pace. However, these excerpts resonate with me. They’re applicable to my situation.
Lord, I invite you into the process of making these steps to forgiveness part of my life. Amen
Works cited
Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc. “Sunday 17 September 2023: Readings at Mass.” The New American Bible, 2001. Universalis for Windows, Version 2.181, Universalis Publishing Ltd., 8 Aug. 2023, https://universalis.com/n-app-windows.htm.
Center, Katherine. Things You Save in a Fire. Kindle edition, St. Martin’s Press, 13 Aug. 2019.
Thibodeaux, Mark E. God, I Have Issues: 50 Ways to Pray No Matter How You Feel, Kindle edition, St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2005.
This week’s readings unpack concepts that the English language zips into a suitcase its speakers call love. The first reading tells me that one concept that love suitcase holds is looking out for each other. The first reading goes on to remind that the drive within us to protect each other is often painful because we don’t always appreciate protective efforts or recognize them for what they are. We especially bristle against warnings, advice, and other kinds of help when we didn’t ask for it.
If is looking out for each other is one half of a pair of glasses that go into the love suitcase, not harming each other is the other half. Maybe a better metaphor for these concepts is a set of hearing aids rather than a pair of glasses. Or maybe the love suitcase contains both a set of hearing aids and a pair of glasses. To look out for each other, we have to be able to see our surroundings through God’s eyes and to hear through God’s ears. Wearing God’s glasses and God’s hearing aids also allows us to recognize and appreciate the protective efforts of God and our neighbors in our lives. This is one message I get from the second reading.
The third reading points me to several ways we harm each other when we don’t wear God’s glasses and hearing aids, when all we can see is our own desires rather than what’s best for us and the people and resources God has given to us. Not wearing the assistive devices God wants to give us doesn’t just result in blurry vision or distorted hearing. It results in a variety of wounds or diseases. The preventative medicine and treatment for these is love. Like an antibiotic, acting with love provides an answer to numerous problems. The fourth reading first recommends that when someone wounds us, we try to treat the injury ourselves. But sometimes we run out of bandages or ice packs and have to get some from a neighbor — or a store. Then there are the times when these over-the-counter treatments don’t do the trick, and we have to seek professional help and sometimes prescription remedies. This is the extended analogy that came to my mind when I read the Gospel reading’s guidance about what to do when someone “sins against” me (Matt 18:15). So maybe this container that represents self-giving love holds not only a special pair of glasses and hearing aids but also special bandages, ice packs, and the ultimate prescription drug — one that doesn’t cease to be effective if we turn to it too much. Instead, I’m told, the more we rely on it, the more powerful it becomes.
What someone else is sharing about this week’s readings:
The reflection on this week’s readings offered by Carolyn Jacobson, MSW, PhD doesn’t use my analogy of the suitcase of love and its contents. Frankly, I’m glad because making that analogy work involves quite a stretch. However, if Dr. Jacobson’s reflection had used my analogy, it would say that we aren’t meant to use the items in the suitcase in a vacuum. Their power lies in their ability to facilitate connection.
Beyond this week’s readings:
My first reaction when I thought about what to write for this section was that the first reading is really uncomfortable to read. Reading it doesn’t give me the cushion of forgetting the passage’s commission and warning as I move on to the next part of the Mass.
And it’s warning is unpleasant to hear. Why? Because it’s easiest to warn someone when there is physical evidence that something he or she is doing clearly hurts himself or herself and/or others. But spiritual harm can be harder to detect than physical harm. I hate even the thought of telling people what I think they won’t like hearing if I can’t prove that what I’m warning against is harmful.
Sharing and being open to correction is especially difficult today when so many voices have access to audiences, and not all opinions can coexist in healthy, productive ways. I wonder if the amount of access many people these have these days to a variety of opinions and information means there are fewer incidences of innocently not knowing something. I wonder if there’s choosing not to find out or choosing to ignore is more common now than these responses have been at other times. Or has humanity simply ignored different individual and societal ills in different ways at different times in different places?
On one hand, I recognize not making assumptions is important, but if I’m reasonably sure that someone has access to the same information about what’s right and wrong and I do, it doesn’t seem helpful to, or warn him or her, even if I haven’t done so before and I don’t know whether someone else has.
I’m wrestling with part of the Gospel reading too. It says that if someone wrongs me and doesn’t want to make amends, even when other people, including those in authority tell him or her to, I should treat the person like a Gentile. To many characters in the Bible, treating someone else like a Gentile means avoiding them as much as possible. And yet, while Jesus might challenge Romans and Sumerians, He doesn’t reject them. Maybe the message is that He doesn’t reject people who are open to Him but that I don’t need to feel responsible for the choices of people who reject my concern. I don’t need to keep opening my concern to dismissal. Rather, the time to consider reopening that door is when the person opens it a crack him or herself.
I want to close this post with a prayer for parents, guardians, teachers, and mentors. God bless advisers and caregivers and grant them Your wisdom, courage, and consolation. Amen.
Work cited
The New American Bible Revised Edition, Kindle edition, Fairbrother, 2011.
Sitting with the Sacred 