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-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter at www.parishlincletter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass at 11:00am on Sunday
Compassion as the telltale sign of the Kingdom
Are you kind? I won't ask you to raise your hand but I'd like you to answer that question in your heart. Are you a kind person? People who work in the area of kindness education tell me that most of us would respond to that question by raising our hands.
The next question that I'd like to ask us is "when was the last time you were intentionally kind to someone with a kind act?" What we're the circumstances of that kind act? What prompted you to make that kind gesture? Was it sympathy? Pity? Empathy? Compassion?
That sensitivity, that alarm bell indicating to you that someone needed comfort, relief, mercy, help, a kind word, a hot meal....that is what the Lord calls the Kingdom of God within you.
How often does that alarm bell go off in you? If I were honest I might say that a different alarm bell goes off in my heart way too often: insulted, frightened, threatened, sad, offended, disgusted, condemning, criticism, etc. Those alarms do not call us to kindness, mercy, patience, love.
Might we need to sensitize our consciences
2 comments:
LOVE your direction, love the questions. Your pointed questions can't be ignored unless one's heart is closed to love, and the pointed questions are like arrows that pierce through the minutiae of our lives and the reality presents itself as it is. Your questions generally reveal Truth within ourselves if we are open to Truth. Makes me realize we are made to give, we are made to love, too often we are self absorbed. And it's a good check for me... What am I giving in this moment?
This Matador reflection inspired me to think through my alarm bells and my resulting reactions. I was struck with thinking about the difference of what goes on in my heart and throughout my whole being, really, when these different alarm bells sound. For instance, when I am sensing care and compassion for another, it creates an additional sense of peace - and perhaps even joy. And if my visible extension of those feelings are well received, the interaction creates an even deeper sense of those feelings. At those times, I am more interested in what is going on in the other person, and in our mutual creation of those sensitivities, than I am in my own personal/individual well-being.
Compare that with what I can only imagine was going on in the heart and mind of the sniper in the recent tragedy in Dallas. From what we know of the news reports - he was overcome with an eagerness to physically hurt someone. That sense and feeling of hatred certainly did not instill a sense of peace or joy in him - it would not have encouraged him to think more about an "other" or would not have created any type of mutual sensitivity in which he could find joy or the grace of God. Instead, he was consumed with a longing to satisfy some kind of ugly hunger of his own. Something that required the expense of another - instead of the building up of the other.
It is interesting to me that, if the date and time of the blog is correct, the Matador wrote his reflection a few hours prior to the Dallas tragedy - yet it speaks so well to it - in a "reverse" kind of way.
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