An Invitation to the Margins

 A spiritual reflection on the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time by Carol J. Dempsey, Ph.D., a Dominican Sister from Caldwell, New Jersey and professor of Biblical Studies at the University of Portland, Oregon. 

This spiritual reflection speaks to everyone, but has special relevance for Vincentians.

Published August 29 in the National Catholic Reporter.

Mothers in Portland, Oregon. (CNS/Reuters/Caitlin Ochs)

Global communities have "woke," with voices from the margins shouting, reaching an ear-piercing pitch in the breathtaking struggle against injustice during a worldwide COVID-19 pandemic.

Everywhere people take to the streets, marching in solidarity against racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, gender and orientation discrimination, police brutality and militaristic law enforcement. The margins have had enough! They rise up, once again, and push against the seemingly impenetrable boundaries of hegemonic power that privileges the few and disenfranchises the many.

The margins make their presence known and felt. They expose the myriad of injustices that have plagued, riddled and marred the human community for eons, leaving the web of life tattered, torn and tottering on the threshold of extinction. The margins speak truth to power. They press in on comfort zones. They will not accept being silenced, bullied, pushed aside, discounted any longer. The margins resist.

This Sunday's readings invite everyone to and into the margins, if some of us are not already there.
Read the whole of Sr. Dempsey's reflection here:
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time: Margins speak truth in National Catholic Reporter

Precarious Work, Vulnerable Workers and COVID-19

 

Image credit: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk

Precarious Work, Vulnerable Workers and COVID-19


 

Precarious work is a term used to describe certain types of employment, usually, but not always, non-standard or temporary. It is precarious precisely because it is insecure and unprotected, it pays poorly and unreliably, and provides very limited or no social benefits and statutory entitlements.

People who are dependent on precarious work employment for their income find it extremely challenging to support a household and often need to take two or even three such jobs in their efforts to make ends meet. Such people are justifiably termed, "vulnerable workers".

We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish

Image credit: rlcfchurch.org

by Deacon Steve Pitre

“We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish”

As we listen to the apostle’s response to Jesus statement, “…you give them something to eat,” do we hear ourselves saying the same thing from time to time? We may not say it like they did but I know I have said to myself, “I only have so many hours in the day and most of that is spent working, commuting and then with family.”

Resurrection, Not Resuscitation

Following is an extract from a reflection on last Sunday's readings by Stephen Bevans, SVD and
Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD of the Catholic Theological Union. The Gospel was Matthew 14:13-21, the feeding of the multitude.

It is the generous extravagance and abundance of “the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” that we need to keep in mind in this trying, difficult, almost unbearable time in our lives. We are in that “deserted place” and it is “already late.” If you are like me, it’s not just the COVID-19 pandemic that is terrifying — and that is terrifying enough. It is the racism and hatred that has revealed itself, the shocking individualism that is prolonging the agony of these months, the painful call (for some of us — liberating for others!) to revise our history and our heroes, the dangerous disregard for science and real wisdom that is harming an entire generation. It is the disregard for human lives, especially Black lives today, that is making us pant with thirst. It is a refusal to see the harm we are causing to our planet, and to future generations of plants and animals and human children, that is making us faint with hunger. We desperately need the love of God in Jesus to feed us with hope, with compassion, with patience, with perseverance.

He Had Compassion

Here is an extract from the Pope's noonday Angelus comments on todays's Gospel about the multiplication of the loaves and fishes:

The compassion and tenderness that Jesus showed towards the crowds is not sentimentality, but rather the concrete manifestation of the love that cares for the people’s needs.

Why does God Let this Happen?

Dorothy Day in 1934

Why does God Let this Happen?

(Covid 19 Reflection #5)

This reflection, written by Denise Bondy, Chair of the ONRC Spirituality Committee, is curated from the SSVP Ontario member site "Spirituality Corner"
 https://members.ssvp.on.ca/en/thoughts.php

God looked at everything he had made, and he found it very good.
(Genesis 1:31)

The poor you will always have with you.
(Matthew 26: 11)

As I write this, some of Ontario is in Stage 3 of the covid 19 re-opening plan while the rest of us remain in Stage 2. It’s becoming a long, long summer.