Not only did she vow to embrace us as people who had done our work to determine God’s will for us, but she accepted our leadership in the matter. Where we went, our faith community would go
We are like the blind man in today’s Gospel – blind so that God’s works might be revealed in us. This is our natural state, and it invites miracles.
Whether it is by tyrants ordering mass killings or by lunatics opening fire on school children, too often in the past several years the massacre of innocents has been headline news.
What does it take to hope again after hope has been totally crushed? Perhaps community helps.
St. John of the Cross knew that the dark night of the Soul is a period that marks the beginning of transformation. The bleakest times hold that promise, even when we can get nowhere near it intellectually or emotionally.
Am I ready to see it when God peers at me out of the eyes of the person with whom I am just now talking?
We don’t have to thump a Bible or get up on a soap box to do the work of evangelism in the world. All we have to do is share what we know of our experience of God from the heart.
We belong to Christ, and though the world is violent and dark, Christ has conquered the world. What, then, do we have to fear? What greater joy is there than this?
He reminds them that they know how to interpret the signs of the sky – whether it will be a rainy day or a fair one. Why can’t they interpret the signs of the times?
As Christians we are often tempted to minimize our own and one another’s violence. Everything from derogatory comments made about women to outright physical abuse are made light of and excused because we want to think the best of one another, confusing denial with love.