
Daily Reflection – 5/18/2023
Sacred Scripture
Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshipped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”(Matthew 28: 16-20)
Reflection
Christ chose the disciples not for what they were, but for what they would be capable of becoming under his direction and power. The world they were commissioned to serve was as tumultuous, as fractured and as topsy turvy as the world that faces us every day.
Guess what? The world we have inhabited needs us involved in His Kingdom just as the Apostles did. We are ordinary people who believe in the Word and do our best to live the Word.
The very best primer on living the Word is to look at the Beatitudes to see how God sees.
God sees as blessed those who are poor. God sees as valuable those who mourn, those who are lonely, those who are persecuted. The Beatitudes reveal that God is committed to those who are in need and those who suffer. It is because God is present to them, they are blessed.
The Beatitudes do not say that it is a blessed or wonderful thing to be poor, or to be grieving, or to be persecuted. They do assert that whenever any of these distressful things happen to us, God comes to us. God is attracted to us because God knows our needs.
The challenge for us today is to stand in our faith that our God is recreating the world and calling us to participate. We are called to believe that God through Christ is establishing the kingdom. How Christ is going to lead us into that kingdom is not entirely clear. But this much is clear: If we are going to follow Christ, we have to begin by claiming his vision—we must see the world as God sees it.
It would be a world where peace triumphs over war, where people are liberated rather than exploited, where there is compassion and mercy for everyone. It would be a world that shuns violence and cares for the vulnerable first, a world of generosity over greed, a world of humility over arrogance, a world that embraces rather than excludes, a world where truth prevails over lies—the world as God sees it
In that vision lies our role. We need to be the nurses of the Divine Physician healing the wounds of those today. The Church is a field hospital in battle, it’s a trauma unit, and so many are wounded physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually. We’re sent out as his apostles to try to care for people in their illnesses and to let Jesus and his healing into their lives, remembering that Jesus never healed just for healing’s sake, but to bring people to the deepest type of healing of all, spiritual healing by faith.
There it all is. You and I are called to triage in today’s world. Every small step we take to heal, to put on a band aid, to offer comfort and hope, to love in spite of another’s differences, to dry the tears of another, to offer our arms as an emotional sanctuary are all steps to building His kingdom.
What a great way to live our lives. I might even sign up for taking extra shifts!
Prayer of The Day
“Lord Jesus, you have chosen me to be your disciple. Take and use what I can offer, however meager it may seem, for the greater glory of your name.”
Daily Note
Those who follow Jesus must be people of hope because God cares for us in our need. We must also be people of solidarity, solidarity with the poor and oppressed. If God is close to those who struggle, if God is close to those who are persecuted or in need, we must act towards them in the same way. We cannot worship God and ignore those for whom God cares. We must as followers of Jesus be people who are committed to eliminating poverty and injustice and oppression because those are the very things that our God is also committed to eliminate.