These past few weekends, we have been reflecting on the readings from the Letter of James. If you have not ever read James in its entirety, I urge you to do so, as it is so instructive in calling us to live out a vibrant, life-giving faith, urging us to be doers of the Word of God in our lives and to bear fruits out of our faith. Even though it was written in Ancient Israel, this letter gives savvy advice and social commentary, so much so that it may seem like it had been written in the modern world specifically for us.
James sees many different things when he looks at the reality of the Christian community of his day. He sees peacemakers in that community who are working toward unity and solidarity. But he also sees those who are planting seeds of discord with their jealousies and ambitions. In our secular world we hear a lot of different messages. Often, the message is to desire more, to attack those with whom we disagree, and to want more than what we have. It is good to have ambitions and to strive toward something if our goal is fruitful, constructive, and healthy, but James warns us that if we get caught up in a cycle of bottomless desire, it can never be satisfied. Bitterness can overtake us as individual lives and destroy our community. There are a lot of sins and addictions that people struggle with in our world today, but perhaps our greatest is our greed and the way we covet what is not ours. James directs us to the need to journey as a community in solidarity and unity, where we work together, affirm one another, and encourage one another.
We can be witnesses for the faith in simple ways. Several years ago, I went to California on a mission appeal. Flying back to Jackson, I was waiting to board my flight at John Wayne airport in Orange County. I got to talking to a lady next to me who was flying back to Alabama. I told her I was a Catholic priest in Mississippi. Unbeknownst to me, there was a man seated behind me who overheard that conversation. As we boarded the plane, which was almost completely full, wouldn’t you know that I ended up in the same row as that man on the plane. He told me he was so excited that he was going to seated with a priest. Usually I am not chatty at all on a plane. I love to read; I usually read the entire flight. But I could sense that this man wanted to talk to me. We ended up chatting the entire flight. He was so on fire with his Catholic faith, so excited to tell me about his two pilgrimages to Our Lady of Medjugorje in Bosnia and his devotion to St Michael the Archangel. He told me about the different struggles he has had on his journey of faith. He also urged me to read a book on Our Lady of Kibeho, an apparition of the Blessed Mother that took place in Rwanda, Africa in the 1980s. We exchanged phone numbers, and we have kept in touch through texts and emails ever since. Both of us feel that the Holy Spirit brought us together to help each other on our journey of faith.
Many things that happen on our journey of faith are made possible by God’s grace and the work of the Holy Spirit. If we are not open to God’s grace interacting in our lives, none of this will be possible. And we have to be open to respond to God’s grace, to take action, to be on fire with faith.
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