Memorial of Saint Francis Xavier

Readings of the Day 

It is hard not to notice themes of building up and being torn down in the reading from Isaiah and the Gospel of Matthew today. In the ancient world, fortifications were matters of life and death; some invading force was always on the horizon (the Holy Land is poor in natural resources, but it’s on the road to everywhere else). Properly built “walls and ramparts” were the difference between security or slavery. All of which leads to Isaiah and Matthew upending that model, asserting that one’s trust and faith are better placed in God. All things built of humankind –defensive forts, political empires, humble dwellings – are subject to deterioration and eventual ruin. God is the one true foundation that does not fail.

Some will struggle with the first verse of Matthew, wondering if they themselves are among those who call out “Lord, Lord” but will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Am I prayerful enough? Sufficiently repentant? Humble, forgiving, loving enough? Jesus tells his disciples that it’s a question of where we put our trust. Words are cheap, after all. The test is in the doing: doing the will of the Father. Or, as others have better said, the test is one of orthopraxy (right action) rather than orthodoxy (right belief).

Yesterday, God came to me in the form of Erica. She had lost her home to wildfire at the end of the summer and spent the next months “camping” until temperatures dropped. Now in Spokane for housing, she offered that she’d been denied in her efforts because she owns two pit bulls. She described that her children had been removed from her custody by the state years ago, and that her dogs were now her children, with personalities that uncannily matched her human children. As she cried in frustration of wanting a stable place to live – even as she was having to leave a motel room because of bedbugs (salt in the wound!) – I felt myself hearing her basic humanity, her suffering after losing her children, her renewed trauma after the fire. Every day at Catholic Charities, God comes to us in distressing disguises. It is our vocation to seek to do God’s will in offering hope of a better tomorrow, in the doing, in the trusting. Lord Jesus, come!

Scott Cooper is Director of Parish Social Ministry for Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington and a member of the CCUSA Parish Social Ministry Leadership Team.

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