FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION: TWENTY-SECOND WEEK OF THE YEAR

FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION: 

TWENTY-SECOND WEEK OF THE YEAR

Our being is a gratuitous, ongoing gift. We do not own it. We cannot ensure its continuance. We just manage it for God.

Invitation:

Jesus calls us to find our security, fulfillment and greatness in giving up all we have and perceive ourselves to be, in order to live in the truth of our nothingness and of God’s All, of our failings and of God’s “steadfast love.”

Our faith: How many of these statements do you believe? And live?

Since on the scale of being, everything we are, have or do depends completely on God “breathing into us” existence itself, there doesn’t seem to be much meaning in anyone’s being “higher” or greater than anyone else. The only real way to be “great” is to let Jesus, whose body we are, do whatever he wants to do with, in and through us. Want to be great? Say the WIT prayer.

Luke 4:16-30: People in Jesus’ home town rejected him for two reasons; 1. resistance to change; 2. false presumptions about what the Messiah should be and do for them. Our baptismal consecration as “kings” commits us to work for change and to upset false presumptions and values.

Luke 4: 31-37: Christians transform the world by casting out our culture’s demons with no power but the “authority” of God’s word and the witness of healing love.

Luke 4:38-44: As “stewards of Christ’s kingship,” we work to establish peace and prosperity on earth: but 1. through justice and love, not violence; 2. not as the goal, but as a means to and consequence of union of mind and heart with God.

Luke 5:1-11: Jesus wants us to do the impossible: reform society, transform the world, establish the reign of God’s love, peace and justice on earth. To do this we must stop teaching a shallow Christianity and go into the mystery of our Baptism.

Luke 5:3-39: To be “faithful stewards of God’s mysteries,” we need to find our identity in them as Christians, ponder them as disciples, make them visible in our lifestyle as prophets, express them in ministry to others as priests, and as stewards of the Kingdom restructure our society to be in harmony with them

Luke 6: 1-5: The “Pharisee party,” with the “chief priests and scribes” (the “power structure” in Judaism), are the only ones Jesus excoriates with fury in the Gospels.

Decisions:

Be a faithful steward: keep investing in what you and others can become.

Keep using your gifts to bring about change.

Manage what you know and know what you manage.