By
Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
Naaman went down and plunged into the Jordan seven
times at the word of Elisha, the man of God.
His flesh became again like the flesh of a little child, and he was
clean of his leprosy. Naaman returned
with his whole retinue to the man of God. On his arrival he stood before
Elisha and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except
in Israel. 2 Kings 5:14-15
If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if
we persevere we shall also reign with him.
But if we deny him he will deny us.
If we are unfaithful he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself. 2 Timothy 2:11b-13
And one of them, realizing he had been healed, returned,
glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked
him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus
said in reply, "Ten were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Luke 17:15-17
Piety
Piety has one of its best expressions in the gratitude
of our hearts for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We know how to
say real thanks when it comes from our heart. How we appreciate the wonders of
the Lord’s creation is seen in all the joy of our heart when we look at life
around us. So we and enter into the mystery of God’s love. God is love. God is always faithful to himself and his
love is everlasting. It forever surrounds and is the ordinary of creation
around us. The only problem for us is that God has made us free to accept his
love. He does not force it on us. He does not make it obvious. It is not
overpowering. We are free to accept it. It is so fully there that we can say
his love is the ordinary of the ordinariness of life. He heals us again and
again without our noticing how well he is taking care of us. Our lives are
perfect reflections of God’s love.
Study
The world with all its wonders is the love of God at
its best. It takes our looking below
the surface to appreciate how much God is doing for us. I climb the cross of
Christ to look at the world through his eyes. There is nothing he would not do
for us even if we do not ask. When we ask he always says “yes.” Sometimes he
sends us something better than what we were asking for. Thus we miss seeing his
love. It is not what we thought we were asking for. Other times he gives us a
wait because it is not yet a good time for what we are asking. At other times he gives us what we were
asking for and it so quickly there, we do not appreciate that it is there for
our having asked. If we study our world, we will see how well God is taking
care of us and how alike we are to the nine lepers who did not come back to say
thanks.
Action
We must die with Christ so that we can live with him.
He invites us take up our cross and to follow him. He is not asking us to carry
anything that is too heavy when we carry our crosses in his name. He does most
of the work because he it is to whom we are yoked. The invitation to Action is
seen in what our hearts let us do in the name of the thanks that our lives
should be. The prayer of the Christian should be the prayer of Thanks. Because we are Contemplatives in Action our
Thanks is expressed in how we are offering our lives for each other in the name
of Christ. We love the God we cannot see in loving the neighbor we see. We bear
with everything hard or difficult in the name of Christ. We obtain the
salvation that in in Christ Jesus by all our actions in his name. Whatever we
do should be done thankfully in the name of Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment