Reconciliation

October 23: Thursday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 3:14-21; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 11-12, 18-19; Luke 12:49-5

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.  

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five)

Reconciliation

“I have come to set the earth on fire.” (Luke 12:49).

Jesus came to “establish peace on the earth,” but he knew it would start with “division.”

Saint John Paul II said, “The consequences of sin are the reasons for division—within each person, and within the social environment. The tragedy of humanity today consists precisely in its similarity to the experience of Babel,” whose builders, “intent on building a symbol of unity, found themselves scattered, divided in speech, incapable of consensus and agreement. They had attended only to the horizontal dimension of work and social life, forgetting the vertical dimension by which they would have been rooted in God” (after Synod on Reconciliation, 12/2/84).

Pope Francis said the Holy Spirit himself causes division, “almost as if he were an Apostle of Babel,” by “giving different charisms and inspiring prophetic innovations.

“But it is also the Holy Spirit who creates unity from these differences,” not in uniformity, “but in harmony” (Tornielli, Francis… 2013).

As “stewards of the fire” Christ started, we are “strengthened with power through his Spirit,” and work “that Christ may dwell in all hearts through faith,” so all will “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, and be filled with all the fullness of God.”

We do this “by the power at work within us” from him “who is able to accomplish far more than all we ask or imagine.”

PRAY: “Come Holy Spirit, enkindle in us the fire of your love.”

PRACTICE: Reconcile differences.