Thursday, May 17, 2007

Being a witness!

Today is the feast if the Ascension of the Lord. In today's Gospel we hear the incredible trust Jesus placed upon his disciples and upon us too!

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day
and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name
to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things. Lk 24:46-53

Being a witness of these things in my daily life may be some what different than the first disciples at first glance. They went joyfully into Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising God. When the Holy Spirit came they really let loose.

Some one did tell me I was a joyful sister today and I do spend quite a bit of time praising God in Church and out. Coming from my part of the world, a rather Catholic ghetto in Boston, MA, we're not too comfortable with going around preaching and praising God. Exposure to other cultures has opened me up some to be more outward in expression. But I can talk all I want, yell in the streets that Jesus is Lord (unlikely) write in a blog of my belief in Jesus and in His teachings, it means nothing if I treat the four sisters I live with poorly. It's an every day commitment to be that witness of the things of the Lord Jesus in all the small ways and in the big ways.
In the face of all the violence and sorrow in our world, the deceit in high places and the disappointments in our lives it's tempting at times to think why bother? Well certainly because God bothered and the disciples and saints of the past bothered. And the disciples and the saints of today still bother. I came across a quote of Dorothy Day,
"people say, 'What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?' They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. but we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes."
So I hope to take my steps, do my actions trusting in God's taking them and doing with them what He will.

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