Thursday, 2/7/13
When Jesus told his disciples not to bring money or food
with them he was not telling them to practice poverty.
No, he was telling them to practice friendliness. Instead of
getting rooms at Holiday Inns, they were to move in with people, sharing
whatever they were eating. (Father Jose from St. Matthews is just back from
vacationing in India. He told me on the phone that the hardest part of visiting
around there was that they expected him to eat at every house.)
Clericalism, when it means claiming to belonging to a social
order above the common people goes against Our Lord’s saying, “You know that those who are recognized as
rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their
authority felt; but it shall not be so among you.”
Jesus told is disciples that if they were not welcome in any
town on leaving they should shake the inhospitable town’s dust off their
sandals. I have heard that the only time Jews were told to shake the dust off
their sandals was when they were entering the temple. They were not to bring
the world’s filth into God’s holy place. By reversing that procedure Jesus was
implying that the whole world was God’s holy place, and they were not to
contaminate it with the inhospitable town’s dust.
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