Weekly Readings Reflections: 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Our readings for the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time are:

Do you think that there is any room for exclusion from the community of believers?
How should we re-integrate someone who comes to us after having left the Church, perhaps in great anger, feeling betrayed, or worse, just lost interest?
If someone were to join our parish from another parish, how should we welcome them? Is a box of envelopes and a list of parish ministries enough?

How helpful to you find the sacrament of Reconciliation?
Do you feel that a priest is the only one who can offer that absolution?
Do you think that it would be fair to saddle anyone else with your "true confessions" even if that other person would, because of their own lived experience, be much better able to relate?

It seems as though it's fashionable these days to take offense at a wider and wider range of sentiments, sayings, statements. As disciples of Christ, how can we avoid giving offense in this environment?
Do you think that there is a time and a place to speak up, regardless of whether it's offensive or not?
How can/should we take into account other's beliefs about what is right and wrong in our own behavior?

Do you think that Jesus had to touch the leper to heal him? Bear in mind that doing so made Jesus ritually unclean.
In an age that is increasingly using electronics to connect people, do you feel that there is still a place for getting up close and personal?
How can we make room in our lives for those who need the touch of God through us?

Preparation for Reconciliation:

Have I ever done or said anything that makes someone else feel unworthy, excluded, undesirable?
When was the last time that I examined my life to see what opportunities to serve that I had missed?
To what extent is my life a service?
How willing am I to break my usual routine, and let someone in need in?

Outside the Camp

We're a ragged lot out here.

Not just that our clothing is in shambles.

This disease has thrown us all together,

Where nothing else would have.

Over there is Ephraim, who used to be a tailor before his fingers went numb.

Then there is Miriam whose family mourns her as dead years before she's actually gone.

Rubin the scribe, perhaps is taking it the hardest, wonders what he did to end up here.

I'm the philosopher of the bunch, and I know enough not to ask.

At first, around the campfires,

We spoke of family, friends, skills that we had

But as the isolation gnawed at us, those ties to our old lives frayed and fell away

And soon, no matter where we came from, how we got here, we were just lepers.

Deep inside, I know that I'm more than a disease.

That these poor souls around me better than mere dead men walking.

But I keep that to myself nowadays, it just gets the others stirred up.

Hope can be more painful than despair.

I want to show them that we are more than slow death.

I've heard that Jesus will soon be here, today.

I bind my feet, since they smell of rotting flesh, and I can no longer feel them,

Gather some provisions, and set off late at night hoping to meet Jesus at daybreak.

I want to ask him what it means to be a leprous Jew?

Why it is that God has visited this horror on me, on us?

How are we to live, now that we can no longer attend temple?

Are we still the chosen people?

Bonus questions:

Do you think this poem needs a few more stanzas?

How would you complete it?

Shalom!

Weekly Readings Reflections