Stop living in the tombs

Good News Reflection
Wednes day of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time
June 30, 2010
Today's Readings:
Amos 5:14-15,21-24
Ps 50:7-13,16-17
Matt 8:28-34
http://www.usccb.org/nab/063010.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_06_30.mp3
Stop living in the tombs
In today's Gospel reading, Jesus delivers two men from the imprisonment of a deadly life, from the tombs not only of their dwelling place but of their hearts. Before Jesus came along, do you think they felt lonely in their graveyard dwellings?
Let me ask you this: Have you ever seen people try to fill their inner emptiness without God? They try to cure loneliness by filling their lives with money, promiscuity, addictions, workaholism or some other ism. A stuffed life is usually a sign of a deadly life. It's an indication of a deeply rooted, often hidden fear that they are unloved and unlovable. This fear is so painful that they anesthetize themselves with alcohol or busyness or whatever can distract them from feeling what's deep inside.
UnGodly choices separate people from God, and this causes soul-felt loneliness, which no human can completely soothe.
Conversely, when a person unites with God, divine love is now able to fill every hole, even the empty places vacated by people who've abandoned them. But this is only accomplished within community life. That's why, whenever Jesus delivered someone from their personal hells, he sent them back into community life.
And yet, even church-going Christians feel lonely. Why? We're never alone, because God is always with us and we're surrounded by people in every Mass. But that's not enough, is it. He created us in his Triune image with a need for fellowship. We experience incompleteness when we seek communion with God without letting him love us through community.
Since we cannot physically feel his hugs or hear his voice, communing with God alone is never sufficient. We only receive all that we need when we turn to God first and then let him minister to us through human companionship within the Church family.
The degree to which we feel lonely is the degree to which we do not avail ourselves of God's community. He has many friends, and he wants to share some of them with us. Going to church and worshipping God in community isn't enough. We need to nurture on-going and growing relationships with other members of the Body of Christ.
Our tombs are the closed-in, sealed-off areas of our hearts where life in the Spirit of God has died because we haven't let Jesus minister to us through others. Every healing that we need, every torment and problem we pray to overcome has Christian community as part of the solution. Jesus wants to deliver us from the tombs of individualism, divisiveness, and a self-sufficiency that goes too far.
Jesus is calling you to come out of the tombs. Let him free you from the old ideas and behaviors that have limited your relationships with his friends.
© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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