YOUR LIBERATION IS NEAR AT HAND

PRAYER MOMENT 

Thursday 27 November 2014

YOUR LIBERATION IS NEAR AT HAND

                     

Pause. Be still in God’s presence.

Reading: “When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.” (Luke 21:20-28)

Reflection. Imagine priest visiting a man in prison who has just been condemned to life in jail and the visitor says, ‘hold your head high, your liberation is close at hand.’ It would sound like mockery but it would still be true. Earlier in his gospel (4:18) Luke had quoted Isaiah’s words used by Jesus that he had come to proclaim ‘liberty to captives.’ The message of liberation is for now – not some distant time in the future. Even when Jerusalem is, ‘surrounded by armies’ the underlying ‘good news’ of liberation is there. When Etty Hillsum was being deported to the death camps during World War Two she wrote a postcard which she threw out of the railway carriage, ‘we left the station singing.’ They were going to their death but as free people. That is the enduring message at the heart of the gospel. No matter what the circumstances we are called to freedom and a prisoner can be more free than those who guard him..

Prayer. Lord, lead us into freedom even in the midst of the restrictions and limitations we experience each day. Amen.  

David Harold-Barry SJ