WERE YOU NOT BOUND?

PRAYER MOMENT                      

Thursday 14 August 2014

WERE YOU NOT BOUND?

Pause. Be still in God’s presence.

Reading: “I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?” (Matt 18:21-19:1)

Reflection. “It is harder for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle…” Jesus had dramatic imagery when he wanted to make a point. In today’s reading he is saying it is so hard for people to think of others, to imagine what it is like for others. They may receive great benefits but when they have the opportunity they refuse to share those benefits with others. Far away we can think, for example, of the Israelis who were persecuted for centuries and suffered genocide . But when they eventually got their own country they started to persecute the very people who were living there. And even within our own borders people were oppressed for eighty years. But when the country became free they started to oppress their fellow citizens who had been victims with them of oppression. Why is it we cannot see? When will we change our way of thinking? We look at others; ‘why don’t they change?’ But I know that either change begins with mysel or it does not begin at all.

      

Prayer. Lord, help us to see things as you see them. Teach us to be compassionate as you are compassionate. Amen

David Harold-Barry SJ