Stand Firm

August 26, 2008
Tuesday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time

Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught, either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours. 2 Thessalonians 2:15

Blind Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean. Matthew 23:26

Piety

May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace, encourage your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word. 2 Thessalonians 2:116-17

Study
http://www.usccb.org/nab/082608.shtml

Several years ago there was a popular trade paperbook book sold at all the cash registers in bookstore and other places called Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and its all small stuff. Today, Jesus is addressing those who worry about the small stuff but forget about the bigger issues.

Of the Pharisees he notes that “You pay tithes of mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law: judgment and mercy and fidelity. (But) these you should have done, without neglecting the others. Blind guides, who strain out the gnat and swallow the camel!” Matthew 23:23:24

What an image! Strain out the gnat and swallow the camel. The camel is judgment and mercy and fidelity.

What are the gnats that bother us? Traffic and weather and sports seem to dominate our news. Of the 22 minutes in an evening newscast, we probably get at least 12-15 minutes of “news” about these three topics. Yet most evening newscasts are devoid about the plight of the poor.

If a stranger were to drop into our society and make a judgment about us based on what they discover on our television programming, they might conclude that we are more concerned about getting NFL Sunday Ticket or making sure that all children are safe, healthy and thriving in life?

At least one of our national cable news channels these days is devoted --- dare I say hopelessly and overloadingly devoted – to every minute developing detail in the news about a missing two-year old girl in Florida. Yet while they give blanket coverage to the tragic story about this girl, they ignore thousands of other missing children. The U.S. Department of Justice reports that 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing. Even if we don’t include the 203,900 children who were considered by DOJ as “in family abductions,” that still leaves 1,600 more children missing each day without the benefit of cable news networks focusing on their cases around the clock.

Even more importantly, also ignored is the plight of poor children through the country. According to the National Center for Children in Poverty:

Nearly 13 million American children live in families with incomes below the federal poverty level, which is $20,650 a year for a family of four. The number of children living in poverty increased by 11 percent between 2000 and 2006. There are 1.2 million more children living in poverty today than in 2000.

Not only are these numbers troubling, the official poverty measure tells only part of the story—it is widely viewed as a flawed metric of economic hardship. Research consistently shows that, on average, families need an income of about twice the federal poverty level to make ends meet. Children living in families with incomes below this level—for 2006, about $41,000 for a family of four—are referred to as low income. Thirty-nine percent of the nation’s children—more than 28 million in 2006—live in low-income families.

Action

Stop sweating the small stuff and make social justice for the poor, the missing and the exploited one of the values that we stand behind and devote time, treasure and talent to alleviate.