Today, we continue to hear from the Letter to the Hebrews, written to Christians who converted to the way of Jesus from the Jewish faith. The author encourages them not to be tempted to fall back to their old ways. The author reminds them of the great cloud of witnesses to the faith, those Old Testament figures who are great example of faith to these Jewish Christians. The author tells them to follow in the footsteps of these great examples of faith, to remove the obstacles that are in their way, and to run the race with perseverance.
If we look back on your own personal journey of faith, we can probably identify many people who have influenced greatly on that journey and who have been examples of faith for us. We need to try to be examples of faith for others. One thing that strikes me about Pope Francis is that he stresses the word “invite,” that we all need to invite others to the faith and offer them hospitality. One thing I think we do very well in the prison ministry is actively invite those at the prison to the Catholic faith. Every time we have our Catholic Mass, I accompany members of our Catholic community to the living quarters of the men where we announce our Mass and invite them to come. When I first arrived at Holy Savior in the summer of 2022, we were not going out weekly, only once or twice a month. Now I go out at least twice a week and our community has grown from about 15 or 20 guys to over 150. But we cannot sit back and expect the people to come to us. We need to not only be examples of the faith. We need to invite others.
No comments:
Post a Comment