Fill Yourself with Love and Hospitality By Beth DeCristofaro
Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr
Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect hospitality, for through it some have unknowingly entertained angels. (Hebrews 13:1-)
Herod feared John, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man, and kept him in custody. When he heard him speak he was very much perplexed, yet he liked to listen to him. (Mark 6:20)
Piety
May I love, Lord, those who are strangers to me in their person, their beliefs that disagree with, or even their threatening actions. Keep me close to you so that I might hear your Word above the noise of my own puniness. May I see them as sister and brother. Help me to say “no” to evil, unlike Herod. Help me to say “yes” to love, hospitality, justice, and humility in your name.
Study
Today we memorialize a young woman who chose death rather than renounce God. We hear the author of Hebrews emphasizing loving acceptance as an essential Christian virtue for the community. And we remember the horrifying evil of a plotting murderess, a greedy, gutless man, and a child willing to be an accomplice to malice. How sickened John’s cousin, Jesus, must have felt. This story and Agatha’s story still disturb us. How does wickedness prevail?
Fr. Mark Link recounts Mahatma Ghandi’s belief that there were seven great evils that could destroy individuals and nations. They were “politics without principle, pleasure without conscience, wealth without work, knowledge without character, business without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice.”[i] What one does is shaped for the good or the bad by what one brings to it.
Into the horror of this Gospel story is the hope we have because Jesus shaped his actions not only for good but into sacredness. He asks us to do the same. If we are his friends, we will willingly shape our lives in his image, even knowing, yet still striving, through the incompleteness, sometimes wrong-headedness of our choices, thoughts and pursuits. We can live without fear of death, like St. Agatha did, knowing his mercy is without bounds.
Action
Do any of the sins listed by Gandhi resonate with me today? With what do I struggle? What threatens our country? Ask Jesus to light my way and fill me with the courage of St. Agatha to return to him, to speak out in truth to counter evil.
Illustration: https://emergencemagazine.org/story/dark-skies/
[i] Mission: Praying Scripture in a Contemporary Way, Mark J. Link, SJ, Thomas Moore Publishing, Texas, 2000, p. 171.
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