Bearing Good News
Piety
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad
tidings, Announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation, and saying
to Zion, "Your God is King!" Isaiah 52:7
And to another, he said, "Follow me." But he replied,
"Lord, let me go first and bury my father." But he answered him,
"Let the dead bury their dead. But you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of
God." Luke 9:59-60
Study
God leads the people back from Babylon to Zion, from whose ruined walls
sentinels greet the returning exiles. In the Gospel, Jesus attempts to lead the
people into his footsteps.
Maybe we are not in a literal far-off Babylon, but we have strayed –
into our iPods, our fast-food restaurants, our ESPN, our “December-to-Remember”
sales, our Congressional hearings, our protest lines, our soup kitchen lines,
our retail shopping lines, and so, so, so many more places.
On Sunday mornings, for (almost) one hour, we say, “I will follow you,
Lord but first, let me get out of the Church before everyone else, so I don’t
have to wait in the parking lot and miss the kick-off to the NFL game of the
week.
In this penultimate week of the Liturgical Year, we have met two kinds
of people. Those whose eyes and ears
were open to what the Lord was asking and those whose eyes and ears were
focused and tuned to another person or another message.
Action
You can almost sense the dawn of Advent-song peaking over the mountains
this morning – even though it is technically a week away.
Isaiah invites us to marvel at the gift of creation. Jesus asks us to marvel at the gift of his
presence. Can we turn off the computer and the TV long enough to matter? Just as St. Column focused on spreading the faith from Ireland to new monasteries in France and Italy, where will you spread the faith?
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