22 September 2020 - Tuesday of the 25th week in Ordinary Time - Proverbs 21:1-6, 10-13

      One of the media outlets I check out regularly is a group called Sancta Familia media that comes out of the Glasgow area of Scotland, run by two young men who very enthusiastically report about the Catholic faith in Scotland.   One of their recent videos is about St Serf, a Scottish saint who lived in the 6th century.  There are a lot of churches and shrines named after him in Scotland.  There is a group of caves in the Scottish region of Fife, the region of Scotland where some of my own ancestors are from, that are said to be the caves where Serf lived as a hermit. They are now on the grounds of a Carmelite monastery.  On the walls of the caves are drawings that date back to the time before Christianity arrived in England and Scotland, depicting the sun, a god that was worshipped in the pagan religions of that country.  Tradition passes down that Serf established different monasteries in the region of Fife and that he also established a monastery on an island located on one of the larger lakes in that region.  Like a lot of saints of that era, it is had to differentiate legend from fact, but certainly St Serf is remembered in Tradition by being a man of prayer and faith who helped spread Christ’s Good News in Scotland. 

        This week in our first readings in the daily masses, we hear from different books of wisdom literature from the Old Testament.  Today, we hear a collection of short sayings from the book of Proverbs that contrast the ways of the wicked and the arrogant to the ways of the wise and the just.  At the heart of these sayings is the way that God does not judge us by the surface or by what he sees on the outside, but rather by what is going on in us on the inside and in our life of faith, how we truly live out the Gospel.  Saints like St Serf and the stories about them also tells us about men and women who have lived out their faith in the reality and challenges that they faced in life.  Lord, may your teachings and your holy word and the example of the community of saints inspire us, lead us, and guide us on our journey of faith.