Lord, guide us to sow seeds of appreciation and not devastation
22nd Week in Ordinary Time (B) : Sunday 1st September 2024
Deut 4:1-2, 6-8; Ps 14:2-5;
Jm 1:17-18, 21-22, 27;
Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 (Ps Wk II)
To care for the earth implies that all creation be given equal treatment. This unbiased care is underlined in today’s passage from Deuteronomy, Letter of James and the Gospel of Luke. Equitable treatment is seen in the perspective of law, faith and the vulnerable. God demands us to exercise diligence and due care and not to devastate creation with disorderliness, infidelity and injustices.
The Word of God is consistent in connecting law, faith and the vulnerable aspect together by reminding us: from Deuteronomy “Do not add to what I command you and do not subtract from it, but keep the commands of the Lord your God that I give you(Dt 4:2),” to Mark “ people honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. They worship Me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules (Mk 7:6-7); then in James “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world (Jm 1:27).”
God’s giving elicits our humane responses. Are we in oblivion? Can we hear creation groaning for equal attention and appreciation?
Lord, You have placed us in a garden of care, guide us to sow seeds of appreciation and not devastation.
homepage zähler Shalom hits from 1st December 2019