Sunday reflection 3 July

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 66:1-7; Gal 6:14-18; Luke 10: 1-12; 17-20

Amidst the cold of winter, when we stay inside more frequently due to the lack of appeal of leaving our heated space, existential questions can pop into our minds whether we like it or not.

One such question is ‘How should I be?’. The season can seem to guide our answer, thus, in winter, we are inclined to ‘retreat’ and do little. Maybe even feel sorry for ourselves because it isn’t warmer or we’re not escaping the cold somehow. Taking a broader view, the question is asked and answered by the responsorial psalm. As we live our lives in their everyday matters, we are encouraged to ‘cry out to God with joy’. In winter!?! Are you kidding!?! Yet there are so many reasons for joy, whether it is our health, our family, our friends, our gifts, skills and abilities, our job, the activity that makes us feel most ‘alive’…or the simple and powerful fact that we are alive.

Underneath some of our personal disquiet, can be a sense of restlessness: ‘what else should I be doing?’ or ‘am I enough?’. Amidst such restlessness, there is no peace. Thus it is interesting that in today’s Gospel, the disciples sent out in pairs by Jesus and proclaim ‘peace to this household’ and that if a peaceful person lives there, ‘your peace will rest’ on them, ‘if not it will return to you’. Shortly thereafter they are to say that God’s reign ‘is at hand for you’. This seems to suggest a closeness between peace and God’s reign.

Returning to the earlier thought, how can there be joy if we are not at peace? 

Maybe if I can engage in reflective practices that include being grateful for the many facets of my life, I can feel enough, I can be at peace…and so ‘cry out to God with joy’?