Saturday, February 14, 2015

Everything for the Glory


By Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ

“As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean.  He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.”  Leviticus 13:46

Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.   1 Corinthians 10:31

A leper came to Jesus and kneeling down begged him and said, “If you wish, you can make me clean.”  Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.”  Mark 1:40-41

Piety
Our piety consists in all that we do for the glory of God.  Eat, drink, work and play all are part of what makes the contemplative in action.  All movements of our mind, heart and body can be dedicated to the glory of God.  We thus live and breathe Christ.  What we do for the honor and the glory of God becomes a prayer.  Thus, we reach what Christ meant when he invited us to pray always.  Our life becomes our prayer.  From the first breath to the last we can be his presence in life by living his life in all we say and do.  The pure Contemplative works to have time to pray.  Contemplative in Action prays that his work be prayer.

Study
We gradually learn how to make our lives glorify God by all we do.  We are all lepers in one sense or another.  All the imperfections of our actions are blocks to living the fullness of Christ in all that we are.  We move our hearts into him by closing the gap between what we do and what we could be doing to give him honor and glory.  We look at Christ so finely in our prayers that gradually we become what we see.  Our colloquies are how we express our love affair with Christ.  Gradually we come to walk our talk with Christ.  We study how to let him direct more fully our every word and thought and action.  We invite Christ into more of our live by what we read about the saints and the great people of God of our lives.  Our study gives birth to a plan.

Action
Our actions give us the chance to bring healing to the lepers of life.  We try to embrace the poverty of the Christ who emptied himself out of his God-ness to truly have the nature of man.  We live our lives making the needs of others our needs as we try to do something about what is wrong in life.  Each day we try to do something positive to make our world beautiful for the Lord.  No task is either too little or too big to keep us from trying to make a difference for the sake of a better world.  Our world is suffering from the abuse of our selfishness needs.  We work hard to make our world more beauteous for the children today.  We do our part to end pollution.  We do our part that there be food and nourishment for all.

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