I always say bishops and a lot of priests should stay away from Twitter. The only thing I do with Twitter is to link a Tweet to something else. This week, a bishop from West Texas directed to Congress, his tweet saying it is time for it to act and one of the things I popped into my mind, was an irony there. If you didn't catch the irony, it's this, aren't we in the business of teaching people what to do and what not to do? and what is best for them in the long run?
One of the questions is if someone says to Congress you got to do something, then maybe the question is what haven't we done?
When we have to go and make a law or we have to take something to court, then somewhere along the line, there's been a failure because those are actually the last resort. So a good question to ask is what have we done wrong that we've come to this state in our reality in our country? We want to look at that, in light of the second reading.
Remember what I said last week, when Jesus Resurrected, the dead a lot of people understand while he resurrects in the dead, that means now we can go to heaven, but there was so much more than that. If you look very carefully when Jesus was resurrected from the dead, that action changes our whole dignity and reality.
So we see Saint Peter is talking about this in this first letter. This is the St. Peter who was with Jesus all the time and was with him on the Mount of Transfiguration. So what he's saying is now? You are inheritors to the kingdom of God. You are part of the kingdom of God, and there will come a time when you will be reunited with God in heaven, but everything is changed on who you are. You're not the same people, you were prior to the resurrection of Jesus, and that same message, he's giving to them is the same message, he's giving to us. You are of a whole different status and dignity because now, you are children of God. Our message is also to bring that into the world to let all people know, they are invited to that whole status and dignity and to understand what that means. We are talking this week during the Tuesday meetings, about Peter Maurin. Peter Morin is one of the co-founders of the Catholic Worker movement and he wrote These very powerful things called Easy Essays. One of the things he said is Church teaching is so powerful that it can change whole societies and it should. But if it doesn't the reason why it doesn't is he says these theologians took all these great powerful messages and they wrapped it up a nice, cute little words, and put them in a trunk and sat on the trunk to silence the powerful message of the Gospel but the message is powerful. We have to take it out and we have to live it in a powerful way. One of the ways that we can live it is to understand who we are and act on it and live in a way where we have transformed ourselves and we can transform our places where we are just giving an example of the kind of person Peter Maurin was.
I was in New York for the past couple days. I happened to see a man walking down the street with no shoes. If I was Peter Maurin, I would take off my shoes and give them to the man. That's the way Peter Morin was. He lived the gospel very powerfully and in doing we understand that our message is there to transform people and help people understand who they are. They have a powerful dignity in the Lord so that they come to be something different than they thought they were, and we're all called to be that through our prayer through our living, the gospel.
We can transform those around us and how do we do that? Just being who the Lord has created us to be growing in our understanding of our faith and living that we're not necessarily called to be standing on street corners and thumping bibles, We are not necessarily called to start pointing at people and saying, you've got to change. We just live the gospel as Jesus called us, which is to love one another, in very powerful ways. One example of This might be something. I also experienced in New York. I was waiting for a bus, was going to get on a bus, you know, I like to take trains but I was going to get on a bus, just to trying to come back to Boston. There I was 3:30, is when my bus supposed to come and I get in line to get on the bus. The guy stands there and he says, I'm sorry, this is not your bus. This is the 1:30 bus, you're on the 3:30 bus and that's coming later. Okay?
I noticed none of the boards were updated They're all electronic. One of them had the date as February 25th. People were trying to get information, they weren't getting information and all of that comes together and I realized none of these people care. They just don't care there. A lot of people are concerned about the Socialism or Communism coming into a country, that's the sign of it. That's, that's what causes it. It's not anything else, it's not political, it's, people don't care.I looked at that and said, this company is not going to be around much longer because nobody cares.
Now, think of this, our role, as people of faith is not only to care, but in your job, everything you do, you treat every person with respect, with the way, the Lord calls you to, and you will be a sign of The presence of the Lord, you'll also be a benefit to your company because you're acting in a way we show. I care.
And that's what it's all about to be transformed in such a way that we just live in a way that just shows that we are believers in what Saint Peter taught us. So, in that powerful moment, we recognize where we are called where the Lord is leading us. So in our daily prayer and our prayer is families. Their prayer is the church. We come together and say, Lord, let us be transformed. So we live as Saint Peter called, us to live and we are people who are caring about all around us.
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