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Word To Life
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Sunday Scripture Readings, Feb. 14, 2010
By Jeff Hensley
Catholic News Service
February 14, Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Cycle C Readings:
1) Jeremiah 17:5-8
Psalm 1:1-4, 6
2) 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20
Gospel: Luke 6:17, 20-26
My wife Susan and I wandered away from our church affiliations during our college years. We began reconnecting with God and the church after serving for a year with Volunteers in Service to America. Through the grace of God and the witness of our rural neighbors we were reintroduced to the value of faith.
On our return, we started attending church, irregularly at first, then committing to regular attendance at Mass. Next came attending charismatic prayer meetings and involvement in the Catholic charismatic renewal. The combination brought us to a lively and active faith.
At the same time, my wife was entering into her career teaching poor children. In those first years she taught reading to mostly poor black children who lived in housing projects near downtown Fort Worth. For the last 20-plus years, she has taught English as a Second Language to high school students from every corner of the world while also providing a classroom home for them as they adjust to a new culture.
In working with disadvantaged and immigrant students, she became, like the Scripture in Jeremiah describes, one who trusted in the Lord and found her hope in the Lord, and we always found God faithful to his promise -- the promise, as Jeremiah put it in today's readings, that those who do trust in him will not become distressed in the year of drought, but still will be able to bear fruit.
When Susan had cancer surgery in December of 2008, a woman who had taught with her decades earlier "happened to be" tutoring in her classroom. The woman was a master teacher, so when my wife was unable to stand for very long at a time, much less take full charge of teaching her classes, her "tutor" rose to the occasion. She was, quite literally, a "Godsend," fruit of my wife's diligence in following God in her vocation to serve and love the poor.
This outworking of God's economy, in which we give to others in one form and it comes back to us in another, shows us that when Jesus says in the beatitudes, "Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh," he doesn't mean only after reaching heaven. God's principles begin to work in the here and now as well.
QUESTIONS:
Have you seen God blessing the giving that others have done with goodness in their own lives? How might God be calling you to invest your love in the lives of others?
SCRIPTURE TO BE ILLUSTRATED:
"Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord" (Jeremiah 17:7).
END
Copyright © 2009 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS Word To Life column may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service.
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