Piety
God, how many times do we fail to hear your voice coming to us through other parts of the Body of Christ? Help us to hear your word spoken through others.
Jesus, how many times have we failed to realize that our salvation comes from your sacrifice? Help us look beyod creed, gender, national origin, race or poliitcs and see the person created in your image and likeness.
Holy Spirit, you know how often each day, we judge others. Help us not to condemn others with the stones we could throw and to offer forgiveness to those who seek it. Amen.
Study
God offers to us sacred scriptures for today to read, to study and to hear.
You are invited to study and reflect on today’s readings:
http://www.usccb.org/nab/040106.shtml
Ok…what’s going on here? A Gospel without a word from Jesus himself? In fact, until we get to the very end, no one is really identified. We are just hearing from “the crowd,” “others,” “the guards,” “the Pharisees,” and the “authorities.”
When we cut through the clutter of accusations and arguments, whom do we find standing in the middle…our seeker Nicodemus, out from the darkness of his first meeting with Jesus. Nicodemus may be the only one among “the crowd” and “the authorities” who actually sought out the truth. And we get the hint here that he may be the only one among all these who is actually embracing it in the public square. While he doesn’t come right out and defend Jesus, he argues against people jumping to conclusions.
What emerges for me is a Nicodemus with more public gumption than the disciples whom we will meet up with next week – the sleeping, betraying, denying disciples hidden away in an upper room.
Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them, “Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him and finds out what he is doing?” (John 7:50-51)
So, are we part of the crowd or are we Nicodemus? Will we stand up in the public square and be identified as followers of Christ?
In fact, Jesus was pretty adamant in saying that he came into the world, not to condemn it but to save it. So, in this our second encounter with Nicodemus, he seems to be showing us that he understands a lot of what Jesus told him back in John 3. Nicodemus knows he may be the only one around who has first heard Jesus out. Yet, he stands there and does not condemn.
And, in a few short lines, Jesus will refuse to condemn the woman about to be stoned for adultery. He will successfully dismiss the crowd with one simple question.
Action
Yesterday was a pretty important day for statements on forgiveness in the Roman Catholic Church in America at the macro-economic international level.
The Chairman of the Committee on International Policy, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), welcomed the decision by the World Bank Executive Board to approve debt cancellation for 17 countries effective July 1. He also welcomed the agreement to cancel poor countries’ debt in the least time possible.“I welcome the recent decision of the World Bank Executive Board,” Bishop Thomas Wenski said. “This important step will mean that poor countries will not have wait over a year for debt cancellation once they have qualified. This step will relieve the burdens on some of our most vulnerable brothers and sisters around the world.”
According to yesterday’s press release, the USCCB will continue to call for the cancellation of debts from dozens of other impoverished nations that require debt cancellation to meet Millennium Development Goals and debt to other significant creditors such as the Inter-American Development Bank. It will continue to work with others to build on the current agreement of fighting poverty in 2006 and beyond through bold debt cancellation initiatives.[1]
In support of the Bishops campaign, will you consider communicating with the World Bank and other global financial institutions to speed of the schedule of debt relief by other countries?
[1] http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2006/06-065.shtml
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