1st Reading: Am 7:12-15
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 85:9-14
2nd Reading: Eph 1:3-14
Gospel: Mk 6:7-13
The Catholic Church has held great influence over our society and there is a need inside of this culture for us to regain our concern for the morality of society. At one point Hollywood desired to please the Catholic Church because the influence that its faithful had was so great that people would band together in solidarity to boycott any film that was found to be offensive. In 1933 the Catholic Legion of Decency was founded and would wield great power inside of the American movie industry. This organization would work hard to guard against anything that was deemed to be morally offensive concerning cinema. This organization and others who followed in their footsteps walked into a world that could be hostile to the faith that was founded upon Christ and His teachings. Instead of giving into the demands of the culture they continued to go out and endure in spreading the faith according to the teachings of Christ. Their work spent inside the harvest helped to transform the culture of the world to Christ and His Church.
Christ sent out his twelve apostles into a world that would not always be accepting of the message of the Gospel. He informed them that there would be people who would not accept them and their message into their lives. Despite this truth they were not instructed to change their message to make people happy, but were simply told to try and then move on. These twelve men were not sent out into an easy world and therefore their desire to preach the truth would bring them all to a martyr's death besides Saint John. It would of been easy for them to conform with the culture and thus forget their Christian mission in order to save their lives. Instead they moved away from Christ and brought His message into the world. No matter what demand would reach their ears they would not change their mission in order to conform to the culture, but would keep Christ before them as the mark on which they should base all that they do. We are each invited to join with them as we go out into the world and must face the culture of our current society.
It has become easy for us to get sucked into our culture and forget the religious morals that we hold dear to ourselves. We exist in a world that has allowed these contrary messages to sneak into our lives and now make excuses to why they should be held as acceptable. Our moral compass has been changed from using Christ as the center of all of our life choices to placing ourselves at the center. We must move away from this state of life and begin to reclaim our culture. We must be the people who step up inside of our world and go out as new disciples bringing with us the teachings of Christ. We are the disciples who enter into a world that will not always accept our message, but we cannot lose hope because Christ stands at the center of the ministry that we bring into the world. When our faith revolves around Christ instead of from the culture that we live within we can truly begin to be free and finally be able to inspire change within the world that we live within.
Today's first reading takes a look at the prophet Amos, who was a simple shepherd who was called away from his job to become a prophet of the Lord. We see from this reading that the priest of Bethel was so upset with Amos for his visions that he casted him off from his midst. Being casted off because of one's willingness to be countercultural happens a lot. Anytime that we join together to profess the truth we will not make our culture happy because we are going against the flow of things. Creating this tension in society is the only way that we can hope to make people evaluate their thoughts and thus live in a tension that can lead them towards the truth. Each of us has been called by the Lord to follow in the footsteps of Amos who was told to: "Go, prophesy to my people." As we go into the world to reclaim the culture from its current state we will be living out this demand. Bringing the Lord into our lives will allow us to be missionaries to our culture who is in need of all the help that it can get.
Our letter from Saint Paul to the Ephesians reminds us of the fact that we are each destined to live out the purpose of God. When we live in communion with God we are opening ourselves up to the praise and glory that comes with Jesus Christ and are being sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit. In order to live out a life that is destined to live out the purpose of God we must hold God at its center and cannot solely draw upon the culture from which we live. When we enter into this culture we must trust in the power of the Holy Trinity which comes to dwell with each of us and can give us the strength to overcome any temptation that may enter into our lives. All the wisdom that we will need to speak and live out the truth of the Gospel can be found inside of the Trinity. It can only be through allowing the Trinity to enter into our lives that we can become true representatives of the Gospel that we must bring into the world. No matter how hard or impossible this task may seem we must rely upon the Trinity as our strength.
As we go out into the world and draw upon the love of that is found inside of the Trinity we are being the disciples of Christ who can reform the culture of which we live. We can thus bring the message of Christ into the world and allow Him to begin to reform our current knowledge of the culture. We can be the voices of reason ,within this confused world, that can forever speak the truth of the Gospel. Not only will we speak this truth, but we will most importantly live it out within our lives and stop allowing our culture to be the one that controls our lives. Many examples have gone before us in this life who have accomplished this great representation of the ministry of Christ, and they fill us with much hope as we go out to accomplish the same task. Therefore my brothers and sisters in Christ I pray that each of us will encounter the truth that is found inside of the Gospel message where we are able to see the kindness of the Lord and trust inside of the salvation that He bestows to each of us.
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