For Us

For Us

September 30, 2012

Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2012 B

By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

The LORD came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses.  Taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, the LORD bestowed it on the seventy elders; and as the spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied.  Numbers 11:25

For whoever is not against us is for us.  Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.  Mark 9:40-41

Piety

What we do in the name of the Lord is our piety.  To know a name is to have power over another.  When a person calls my name, I turn to listen.  Jesus was given the name above all other names.  At the mention of his name all the knees of the people bow their heads and give reverence.  We try to hold holy the name of the Lord.  The Hebrew people were careful not to say the name of the Lord.  They kept God at a distance.  To get too close to the Lord brought the threat of death.  How can I touch the Lord and live?  That was the way of so many people with God.  Sin keeps God at a distance.  Obedience to the commands of God keeps us close to God’s way of thinking and allows us to walk with holiness.  Our closeness to the Lord is seen in the goodness of our lives.  Our blocks to closeness with the Lord are our sinfulness.

Study

The good people of our lives are quick studies of how the Lord acts.  The saints are people that have absorbed God in all they see and act on in life.  They are the men and women that spell out by their example how to be a good person.  Study of the saints allows us to know how to walk in the footsteps of Christ.  The good people of all the Christian Churches are acting in the name of the Lord.  How we see people in other Churches who do not have the fullness of the advantage of Christ can make a difference in how we behave.  We can do good and even better things if we let them challenges us to improve our lives by getting closer to the something of Christ they represent.  We study how to live up to our heritage.  We live the presence of Christ by becoming his presence though our Sacramental life.  The Study of the Christ that the Scriptures portray for us allows us to draw closer to him.  Hopefully we do not mistake who Christ would be in our lives.

Action

We all need to try to make Christ the center of our lives.  Making the extra effort each moment to do what we do in the name of the Lord is always a good start on the rest of our lives.  We have a little bit of heaven in us when we try to make our lives into a deeper presence of Christ.  There is no end to the journey.  Our goal of life is the journey to a closer walk with Christ.  Our measure of our journey is in how well we can tell another when you see me, you see Christ.  Our action of life is to be Christ-like.