We are truly alive, when we share

Within your own life’s gospel story where has He revealed Himself to you?  Did you deny a ministering to yourself, and allow anger and resentment to eat away at yourself, and all your relationships are seriously affected?  I have found in 56 years of ministry all those plastic Facebook smiles is one teed off human being.  Another word can be inserted there for those who are familiar with that word.  Within your extended family where is the Suffering Christ shunned, hidden away rather than receiving the acceptance necessary for the journey into healing?  Under the disguise of the unplanned pregnancy, the divorce, the different forms of addiction and compulsions, etc., etc.    The Suffering Christ is hidden waiting for compassionate eyes to discover, embrace, and be ministered to?  Compassionate eyes are gifted to us as the result of our personal journey through the Paschal Mystery.  As some person wrote "there is no cheap grace."  Today we are challenged to have eyes of compassion for the gay son and daughter.  Theirs is a frightening statistic for us to reflect on as we see the number of suicides, and attempted suicides among the transgender community.  These boys and girls, teens and young adults, men and women are not just a name or a number they are actually our brothers and our sisters in whom God has chosen to reveal The Awe-full-ness of Presence.  We need our lenses not tweaked but really seriously adjusted so as to be able to see beyond.  In this new ability to see we will discover to our amazement The God of Surprises in an ever-changing disguise.  Sad to say there are those, who because of hardened hearts, need a whole new set of glasses.

Thank God this last Advent-Christmas-Epiphany Season The Holy Family was revealed in the immigrant family as never before.  How very sad it was to read of the push back by so many self proclaimed followers of The Suffering and again Crucified one.  Let us not say we are going to pray for The Suffering Christ but actually take a concrete action to alleviate actual pain, and suffering.  Whatever we DO for the least ones, as they are encountered by us on our journey, we are doing to The Living God Incarnated anew. The Incarnation is a mystery.  Mysteries in the spiritual realm are never solved.  All that happens is we are drawn ever new, by The Holy Spirit, into the challenging depth realities of the mystery to be enlightened for a more vitalized way of living.  This new living will not be in isolation but in an ever more exciting communal living.  We are called to be members of the whole human family.  This is NOT new age.  When we take the theology of The Mystical Body and make a depth reflection on what it really says to us, we the many will now join the few.