1 Peter, Chapter 2, Verse 17
Give honor to all, love the community, fear God, honor the king.
We are to be good citizens but God’s citizens first. We are to love our
community.
One recent change in the liturgy is in “Lord, I am not worthy to
receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed,” Catholics have said
this for decades, but due to translation changes those words have been amended
to, “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say
the word and my soul shall be healed.” This expression of faith makes me think
of all those who are under my roof and are under my protection but then I
reflect further. I think of all those roofs I am under: the church, my work, my
community and family. I am humbled and ask God to bless them all not just
myself. We are not alone we are a community of love.
Yes it is true we have
the freedom Christ gave us; but to be truly free we must serve and give
reverence to God, esteem for everyone and committed love for our fellow Christians.
We are to honor those who are under our roof and those whose roof we are under.
To honor someone means
we give great attention to them and listen to them when they talk (put down the
smart phone). If they make a request or suggestion we make every effort to do
it. It means you give them respect and high esteem; you treat them as being
special and of great worth. For indeed they are, did not our Lord die for them.
Christ asks us to go the extra mile with them; to accommodate them: out of
honor. This is the noble way we are to live.
In the movie Les
Misérables (1998 film), Liam Neeson plays, Jean Valjean, a man who
was arrested for stealing bread and after 19 years is released on parole.
However, no one is willing to allow him, a convict, to stay the night. Except
for Bishop Myriel, who kindly welcomes him into his home. Valjean explains to
Myriel that sleeping in a real bed will make him a new man. In the night,
Valjean, interrupted by Myriel while stealing his silverware, strikes him and
flees. When the police arrest Valjean, Myriel tells them that the silverware
was a gift and scolds Valjean for failing to take his candlesticks as well.
Myriel then reminds Valjean that he is to become a new man.[1]
“If indeed
‘the just ordering of society and of the state is a central responsibility of
politics,’ the Church ‘cannot and must not remain on the sidelines in the fight
for justice.’” So writes Pope Francis, quoting Pope Benedict XVI. Our nation
faces many political challenges that demand well-in
-formed
moral choices: The
ongoing destruction of a million innocent human lives each year by abortion
- · Physician-assisted suicide
- · The redefinition of marriage
- · The excessive consumption of material goods and the destruction of natural resources, harming the environment as well as the poor
- · Deadly attacks on Christians and other religious minorities throughout the world
- · Efforts to narrow the definition and exercise of religious freedom
- · Economic policies that fail to prioritize the needs of poor people,
- · at home and abroad
- · A broken immigration system and a worldwide refugee crisis
- · Wars, terror, and violence that threaten every aspect of human life and dignity.
As
Catholics, we are part of a community with profound teachings that help us
consider challenges in public life, contribute to greater justice and peace for
all people, and evaluate policy positions, party platforms, and candidates’
promises and actions in light of the Gospel in order to help build a better
world.
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The work of researchers who reported detecting the signal left behind by the rapid expansion of space billions of years ago is rooted in the efforts of a Belgian priest whose mathematical computations in the 1920s laid the groundwork for the Big Bang theory. Msgr. George Lemaitre, a mathematician who studied alongside leading scientists of the first half of the 20th century exploring the origins of the universe, suggested that the cosmos began as a super-dense "primeval atom" that underwent some type of reaction that initiated the expansion of the universe which continues today. The priest's conclusions challenged the conventional hypothesis proposed by luminaries such as Albert Einstein and Fred Hoyle that the universe was in a steady state. Researchers in cosmology over the decades refined Msgr. Lemaitre's idea, leading to what became widely known as the Big Bang theory and later ideas that signs of the Big Bang can be detected. The most recent evidence supporting the Big Bang emerged March 17 when a team of scientists announced they detected polarization in light caused by primordial gravitational waves originating from the Big Bang. The measurements were made with the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization experiment, or Biceps2, located at near the South Pole.
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