I'm glad that we read from the Book of Job last week. Man did he pay the price. Job summed it up beautifully: the Lord gives and the Lord takes away; and then the payoff: blessed be the name of the Lord. I have not had a free moment this week, no opportunity to leave work and go home and spend a quiet evening doing something quiet. It has been a busy ministry week. By night I have attended parish meetings, conducted a baptismal seminar, met brother Deacons to pray for one of our own experiencing great medical challenges within his family, attended a Deacons meeting, ministered to the men of Rayburn prison and met with the 1st communion class to do a teaching lesson on the discipline/season of Lent. Please understand, these varied opportunities, all at the end of the day, are for me a source of great joy and a beautiful reminder that I am an icon of Christ the Servant, who came to serve and not be served. With these and many other ministry opportunities I feel like I am squarely in the "Lord gives column".
By day, I have obligations like many of you. It's off to work, do whatever my tasks are, run some errands, pay some bills, attend to daily, weekly or monthly functions. As a Deacon I am keenly aware that I am not to seperate "being a Deacon" even when I'm not formally engaged in ministry. In reality, for the ordained, it's about "being" so I am still a Deacon while doing the duties of the day. As a Deacon I am also keenly aware of those times when social justice violations occur. When they collide with your duties and your "being", and worse, when they are perpetrated against you, or those we love, oh man, it feels like your stuck in the "Lord takes away" part of Job's pronouncement.
Maybe when you are oblivious, you are better off. I don't really believe that. I know what is wrong by day and what needs to change. If everything we are, if everything we do is for His greater glory, you know for all my Jesuit friends, A.M.D.G., then sometimes we need to take action to make the days equal the nights, the work and toil of our hands be more ministry and less job, and to stand up and call tyranny what it is; evven at the workplace, or school or the public square.
For now, I pray and contemplate what is God that ask of me in this my greatest professional challenge. Speak Lord, your servant is listening.
So I rejoice in my "being" I rejoice in ministry and I rejoice in victory that is mine in Christ Jesus. And whoever disagrees; you will not steal my joy and you will not take my peace and you don't win; unless it too is victory in Jesus.
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