Friday,
1/18/13
The
Gospel story is familiar to all of us. We have mental pictures of the paralytic
dangling through the roof by four cords. When Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven that was not
what his four friends on the roof had been hoping for. However, if the man
himself had been blaming his paralysis on his own sinful past that forgiveness could
have been what he most needed.
Let’s
take a look at the Responsorial Psalm. It says, “What our fathers have declared
to us, we will declare to the generations to come.”
Stretching
it a little, that Psalm could remind us both of our many debts to the people of
preceding generations and of our obligations to our succeeding generations.
In
regard to those who went before us we are of course indebted to our direct
ancestors who did not pollute our DNA with abusive habits, but we are indebted
as well to the whole of the society that provided us with the food, the
dwellings and the energy that sustain us.
For
coming generations we are obliged to continue providing the food, dwellings and
energy they will need to sustain them. But our obligations to them extend as
well to contributing to their happiness.
That
might sound like too vague of an obligation for us to act on, but nevertheless
it is a real obligation. Each of us might come in contact with two dozen people
a day, and however minimally our kind interest in them or our indifference to
them affects them, they will be better or worse for it. And that in turn might
have a ripple effect on those with whom they come in contact.
Everything
we do makes the world around us a teeny teeny bit better or a teeny teeny bit
worse, and it all adds up in the long run.
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