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30th Sunday of Year A – 2020

23 octobre 2020
Nicole Gregoire
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Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: Ex.22:20-26, favorite, help needed, orphan, persistent widow, poor, refugees, Rom.2:11, widow

Writing to the first Christians of Rome, Paul tells them:
“God has no favorites.” (Rom.2:11)

Yet, today’s 1st reading leads me to think somehow differently.
It seems that there are some people who are God’s favorites.
The text of Exodus mentions them (Ex.22:20-26):

      

“The foreigner (those we call migrants or refugees), the widow, the orphan, the poor.”
All of them have one thing in common: they are needy people.
And their need makes them reliant on God
Their need seems to draw God’s love and compassion in a special way.

They are aware that they cannot manage on their own,
They are conscious that they need the assistance of someone else.
God is willing, he is anxious even, to come to their help.
More still he orders his people – the Jews – not to mistreat or be unjust to such people.

Could it be that God wants needy people to become… OUR favorites also?
And to treat them with God’s own compassion…
 

Note: Another reflection on a similar theme in French can be found at: https://image-i-nations.com/30e-dimanche-de-lannee-a-2020/

 

Source: Images: freerangekids.com   splash   AP News   The Guardian
 

Good Friday, Year C – 2019

19 avril 2019
Nicole Gregoire
Aucun commentaire
Catégories: Anglophones et anglophiles
Mots-clés: chaos, confusion, help needed, Jn.11:50, Jn.19:22, Jn.8:5, king, Seven Last Words of Jesus, the Word, Torah

When things get mixed up… there is chaos, confusion, people get… lost.
This was what we were up to and our condition was rather… desperate – we needed help.

Someone came – Someone with a capital S…
But… things got mixed up for him as well.
He had come as a servant but they made him a king! 
A case of… ‘mistaken identity’?
Pilate stood his ground: “What is written is written” (Jn.19:22).

Worse still: He was the Word,
but the religious leaders of his people used the word of God – their Torah – to condemn him!
They had tried more than once:
“The Law of Moses commanded us, what do you say?” (Jn.8:5)

Finally they had come up with: 
“You don’t seem to have grasped the situation at all!
You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people
than that the whole nation perish.” (Jn.11:50)

And the text goes on:
“He did not speak in his own person, it was as high priest that he made this prophecy.”
They were afraid to lose to the Romans their ‘’Holy Place’ so… they were ready to kill the Holy One…
And they did, they obtained from the Roman procurator what he did not really want to grant them:
the condemnation of an innocent…

Today, as we look at the Crucified one, we remember his Seven Last Words.
For many years, Christians have meditated on them.
But… do we remember with the same faithfulness all the other words he spoke during his life on this earth?

Do we recall especially the ONE word he left us as his testament?
“Love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn.13:35)

It is perhaps more challenging, more demanding, more directly addressed to each one of us
than the seven others we have chosen to list and remember with devotion?…

 

Note: Another reflection is available on a different theme in French at: https://image-i-nations.com/vendredi-saint-annee-c-2019/

 

Source: Images: wikipedia   ecosia.org   youchepcatholic.org