8/7/2015 – Friday of the 18th week in Ordinary Time – Deuteronomy 4:32-40 –

       Moses calls the people to return to the Lord, for they had abandoned their faith in many ways.  He reminds them of what God did for them in liberating them from slavery in Egypt and in guiding them through the desert to the promised land.

        Sometimes we have a hard time remembering.  Sometimes we remember in a selective way.  Sometimes what we remember changes over time.  This week marks the 70^th anniversary of the bombing in Nagasaki and Hiroshima that led to an end of the Second World War. As you can imagine, the use of atomic weapons has been viewed very different in the United States and Japan.  In 1945, after the bombings, a poll found that 85% of Americans approved of using the new atomic weapons to destroy those two Japanese cities.  In a recent poll, 56% of Americans said that use of those atomic weapons was justified, down from 63% in 1991.  Today, only 14% of Japanese saw their use as justified.  The Lord calls us to be peacemakers and mediators in the world, the Lord calls us to justice and righteousness, yet when we see so much violence and crime in many of our own communities today, we know that working for these ideals of our faith is not an easy task.  We remember the works in our Lord in our lives.  We remember our history and our journey of faith.   And we pray that the Lord continue to lead us and guide us.