Time to Speak

September 26: Friday of Week 25 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:  

Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144:1, 2, 3-4; Luke 9:18-22

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? (To support Reaching Jesus... Step Five).

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“The Son of Man came to serve” (Mark 10:45).

“There is an appointed time for everything.” We, Scripture says, are living in the “fullness of time” (Mark 1:15; Galatians 4:4; Ephesians 1:10). Everything required for the accomplishment of God’s plan on earth has been put in place and set in motion. The Savior has come, lived, died, risen, and is living now in us, his body on earth. He has sent the Holy Spirit into our hearts, so that we might “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). To “serve” is to accept this responsibility.

There is “a time to be silent, and a time to speak.” Most Catholics grew up thinking that for them it was “a time to be silent,” because the spirit of clericalism in the Church taught us to be passive sheep who never questioned our shepherds.

That was wrong. Almost every time the Scripture calls those charged to care for God’s people “shepherds,” it is to condemn them. “My anger is hot against the shepherds, and I will punish the leaders!” They are “stupid,” “asleep,” their “flock is scattered.” They “have fed themselves, and not my sheep.” They do not “care for the perishing, seek the wandering, heal the maimed, or nourish the healthy” (see Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah). When that is the case, the laity must act for the Good Shepherd. They must speak out.

PRAY: “Blessed be the Lord, my Rock!”

PRACTICE: Speak when it is “time to speak.”