FORTY-FIRST FORTY DAY FAST
FOR THE TRUTH OF GOSPEL NONVIOLENCE
JULY 1-AUGUST 9
FAST FOOD, Twenty-Fourth Helping
By turning over his authority to Simon-Peter, an uneducated, unrecognized and powerless fisherman sitting on a rock in the desert, Jesus was saying that the kingdom the Apostles dreamed of was absurd. There wasn’t going to be any kingdom as they imagined it: no thrones, no positions of power, no wealth, and no prestige, no lording it over others.
If the disciples’ image of Jesus’ kingdom is not consistent with the picture of Simon Barjona in dust saturated clothes governing it from a rock in the desert, shabby, uncelebrated and utterly voiceless in the halls of political power, then they do not understand Jesus as Messiah and they should not be the ones to announce him. Better they should keep quiet until they do.
His disciples’ mistake was to think that the image of a poor and powerless Simon-Peter was inconsistent with the reality of headship in Christ’s kingdom. Our mistake is to think that the reality of Christ’s kingdom is consistent with the image of wealth and power. It is one and the same mistake.
NO POWER BUT LOVE
Rev. David Knight, PhD (Moral Theology, Catholic University), 60 years a Catholic priest, author of forty books on Catholic Faith and teaching. For further biographical information see, https://cdom.org/father-david-buell-maria-knight-obituary/
-Emmanuel Charles McCarthy
www.emmanuelcharlesmccarthy.org
“Nothing is better or more necessary than love.
God is pleased with nothing but love.
One act of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God
and of the soul, and more profitable to the Church,
than all the good works together,
though it may seem as nothing.”
– St. John of the Cross
God is pleased with nothing but love.
One act of pure love is more precious in the eyes of God
and of the soul, and more profitable to the Church,
than all the good works together,
though it may seem as nothing.”
– St. John of the Cross
