Spiritual Reflection for September - Charity & Justice

Charity and Justice

We are well acquainted with the two-fold commandment that Jesus quoted, to love God with all we've got and to love our neighbour as ourselves. (See Matthew 22:36-40.) To be commanded to love is somewhat paradoxical. The act of loving, of course, can only be done voluntarily: we cannot be dragged kicking and screaming to love; we choose to love or not to love. But, for us as Christians, it is nevertheless a matter of obligation. 'Love, or take the consequences.' The paradoxical nature of Jesus' command helps us better understand what Jesus intends here. He is NOT commanding us to have warm, fuzzy feelings in our hearts for God and our neighbour. Trying to work up such feelings inside of ourselves would not be a good place to start rolling out how to fulfil the Great Commandment. This love is to be exercised in action, not emotion, by acts of compassion and kindness.

"I have come to set the earth on fire" - Jesus of Nazareth

Here is the Pope's address before the Angelus today...

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

In today’s Gospel (Lk 12:49-53), Jesus warns the disciples that the time to make a decision has come. His coming into the world, in fact, coincides with the time to make decisive choices: choosing the Gospel cannot be postponed. And to better understand His call, He uses the image of fire that He Himself came to bring to earth. Thus, He says: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing”. These words are intended to help the disciples abandon any attitude of laziness, apathy, indifference and closure, to welcome the fire of God’s love; that love which, as Saint Paul reminds us, “has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Rom 5:5). Because it is the Holy Spirit that makes us love God and makes us love our neighbor; it is the Holy Spirit that we all have inside.

Spiritual Reflection, Summer 2019 - Attitude

When a person first learns to fly airplanes, this pilot-to-be is trained to fly under what is called VFR. This is an acronym for Visual Flight Rules where the pilot relies on being able to see the horizon in front and on the sides. Only later do they learn IFR, Instrument Flight Rules, whereby flying is purely with reference to flight deck instruments and navigation under direction from Air Traffic Control.

Visual Flight Rules provides a good analogy for many life circumstances, but a particularly beautiful one for Christians and, in particular, for Vincentians and people in ministry to others. This is because VFR is all about two basic words: attitude and power.