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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