The Gospel messages in these "ordinary" times are pointed calls to what it means to be a follower of Christ (all from Gospel of Luke):
Aug 8: Be watchful and awake
Aug 15: He has cast the mighty down from their thrones
Aug 22: Enter through the narrow gate (apparently with NO "baggage"!)
Aug 29: Go and take the lowest place
Sep 5: Renounce all your possessions [to be] my disciple
I feel like crying out, "Give me a break for a minute!" But notice the cadence and "the call": we don't need all the "stuff" that we accumulate; and that includes our mental stuff.
As the wonderful English mystic, Evelyn Underhill, puts it:
"We mostly spend our lives conjugating three verbs: to Want, to Have, and to Do. Craving, clutching, and fussing on the material, political, social, emotional, intellectual---even on the religious plane---we are kept in perpetual unrest; forgetting that none of these verbs has any significance, except in so far as they are transcended and included in the fundamental verb "to be"…Being, not wanting, having, and doing, is the essence of a spiritual life.
Let's carry that message in our hearts this week.
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