Archived entries by Father Tom Sullivan brought over from old website.
Sunday 01/31/10 Readings Posted 01/30/10 8:17pm
Our first reading today pictures God launching Jeremiah on his role as heaven’s man in this unwelcoming world. God told him, “I appointed you to the nations.”
As always happens with our Sunday Masses, this first reading is chosen because it matches the Gospel. There too Jesus was setting out on his public life. With Jeremiah God tells him to expect rejection. Jesus experienced that rejection when the people he grew up with rose up and drove him out of town.
God promised help to those servants. He told Jeremiah he would make him “a pillar of iron, a wall of brass.” But in our readings the only help God offered them was the gift of love. Paul says love is of greater value than a power to work miracles, speak all languages, or read minds. There is an old Latin adage: “Amor vincit omnia,” or, “Love conquers all.”
The underlying message for you and me in today’s readings is that loving our enemies is our best defense against them. Our list of those we are against might include, Pro-choice people, Al Qaida, drug dealers, Republicans, Democrats. Our surest way of getting around any of them, the way that worked for Jesus, is to love them.
Our love for our enemies should begin with admitting that they think they are doing the right thing. We should make much of what we have in common. From that we should go on to searching out the motives for their taking stands opposite to ours. Perhaps there will be something we can change to ease the way. If not, our loving attitude toward them will at least soften their opposition to what we hold.
Saturday 01/30/10 Readings Posted 01/29/10 4:10pm
Jesus, his head on a cushion, was sound asleep in the stern while the apostles, seasoned sailors all of them, were losing their fight with the worst storm they ever encountered. In terror they called, “Lord doesn’t it mattered to you that we are about to die in this storm?”
