Wednesday 26 November 2008

Be a Hero in Your Own Little Piece of God’s Earth!

Rev 14:1-5 / Lk 21:1-4
Heroes fascinate and beguile us, but they also confuse us, because the choices they make and the sacrifices they so willingly offer on behalf of some great cause or other are hard to explain. Why would Mother Teresa abandon an interesting and comfortable teaching career among the affluent to work with the poor whose bodies stank and whose sentences didn’t parse? Why would the 17th-century Jesuit missionaries to North America trade the safety and fascinations of university life for life among Indians who showed little interest in learning about Christ and who ultimately killed the whole lot of them?

Questions like those could be asked thousands of times over, as they could be asked of the poor woman in today’s Gospel, who gave her last penny to those who were even poorer than she. There is no answer to any of those questions and none of those choices make any sense at all until and unless we consider the faith-love factor.

Only the world-vision that faith gives us, the confident belief that each of us is loved and cherished by an infinite God, can provide anyone with sufficient energy (we call it “grace”) to reach out with confidence and joy to love and take care of our brothers and sisters. Whatever the shape of our reaching out, the power to do it and to sustain it faithfully comes from beyond ourselves. It comes from the One Who loved us first, and Who was willing to die for that love.
St. Paul said it so well: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.” It’s true of us all. Trust that and be a hero in your own little piece of God’s earth.


by:catholic exchanged

No comments: