Monday, February 19, 2007

Comfort the Afflicted, Afflict the Comfortable ...

Yesterday for Transfiguration Sunday (the last Sunday before Lent) we celebrated Communion ... it was one year since our first service in St Alphonses Roman Catholic Church following the fire ... I spoke the words of Communion with the children of the congregation gathered on the floor before the communion table ... It was a beautiful moment ...

But these words in the liturgy stood out for me:

Mighty and Tender God
In Jesus of Nazareth
we recognize the fullness of your grace:
light, life and love, revealed
in words that confront and comfort us,
in teachings that challenge an change us,
in compassion that heals and frees us ...

As we broke bread and looked backwards and forwards in our life as a community and as people, the understanding of the Gospel as a message that will simulataneously comfort those who have been afflicted by the world, and will afflicted those who have grown comfortable and complacent seemed real ... the challenge now is to live THAT ...


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