In the Heart of
the World

A Welcoming Church

Day 32: Wednesday, Week 5

Compassion rises from the inside-out. Like Jesus, we are to announce a God of compassion who suffers with us, cries with us and hears the cry of all creation but who also rejoices when life flourishes.

From the cadences of the Magnificat (Lk 1:46-55) to the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:33) to Jesus reaching out to the woman at the well (Jn 4), to the woman taken in adultery (Jn 8:3-11), to the man born blind (Jn 9: 1-7), to the widowed woman of Nain whose only son had died (Lk 7:11-17), we see how compassion breaks down barriers. It is hospitality, then, turning again and again towards our neighbour, which lies at the very heart of compassion.

Being a compassionate presence in our world, makes us a Church of Hospitality—a place where dissensions and factions have no place; where neither ethnic nor gender discrimination exist (Gal 3:28), where all gifts in the community are recognized and received equally, for all are needed to build up the Body of Christ (1 Cor 12:4-31).

Hospitality to one another in the Body of Christ enables us to look beyond ourselves to meet the stranger, the disenfranchised, to listen to the unspoken joy, pain, and yearnings in the other person. Hospitality, born of the Eucharist, expressed by compassionate attention to others leads to the breaking down of barriers and the rise of solidarity for our common humanity makes us all brothers and sisters regardless of race, culture, religion and politics.

Our compassionate awareness of others turns our attention to listen to the cries of creation. We have all emerged from the womb of the earth (Gen 2:7). The world as the first sacrament needs to be carefully tended, nurtured, protected, guided, loved and befriended both as valuable in itself—for like us, it was an expression of God—and as necessary to the continuation of life. All things exist in God.

Reflection

  • In what way do I welcome others day-by-day?
  • How do I express my responsibility before humanitarian and ecological crises?
  • How can I come to a better appreciation of the earth as my mother, who nourishes certainly but also needs love and compassion?
 

Prayer

May God’s desire become mine.

Everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labour for that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant
(Isaiah 55:1-3).

 
 

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