The Forces of Change: Prayer and Action
In today’s reading,
St. Paul asks the Thessalonians to pray that he and his companions, “be delivered from perverse and wicked
people, for not all have faith”.
St. Paul had reason
to be concerned about perverse and wicked people. He knew the history of the
Jewish people and was certainly aware of the story of the seven Maccabees who
were arrested, tortured and killed for their faith. Paul, a man of prayer, asks
the community to pray for him and his companions that God will protect them
from the perverse and wicked things that people without faith do as he
continues his mission to spread the Good News about Jesus.
The question that
this account from St. Paul’s life raises for us today is, “Does the evil and wickedness we experience in our world today come only
from the hearts and minds and hands of ‘those without faith”?
Unfortunately, the answer is to this question is...no. Discrimination, the
exploitation of the poor, the profiteering from the hopelessness and misery of
others is a business today and, and many are eager reap the profit from such enterprises.
All we have to do is, “remove the
wooden beam from your eye first” (Mt 7:5) in order for us to see how we may
participate in the suffering of others by what we do… or what we fail to do. There
are many ways in which we, the faithful, contribute to the suffering of so many
people around us - people of color, the elderly and vulnerable, the immigrant,
the single parents, the homeless and those “working
poor” who struggle just to live simple lives. The sad reality is that so much evil and harm is
done by people professing to be people of faith; those who fill our churches,
temples, and mosques. Insane, but true nonetheless.
St. Paul was able to
deal with the evil he experienced spreading the Word for two reasons: he was a man of prayer, and he was a man
of action. Prayer and work: pray as if everything depends on God and work as
if everything depends on us, advice echoed by St. Augustine some 350 years
after St. Paul.
If we are ever to
have any success in eliminating the racism, poverty, discrimination and sexism
from our society and in the world, we must find the right balance between
prayer and action. Prayer is the way we get things right on
the inside, “cleanse first the inside of
the cup…” as Matthew
writes, (Mt 23:26) so that the love of God can flow out to others.
Perhaps this week we
can commit some time to daily prayer. In the quiet of our hearts God speaks to
us telling what we can do to bring about the world that he has in mind for us:
one without poverty, or war, or hunger; a world of right relationships built on
the sure knowledge that God’s abiding love rests upon each and every one of his
children.
Enjoy the day!
Deacon Tom
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