In today’s First Reading Amos evokes imagery that could take us back to the Garden of Eden: a time where the earth’s blessings were abundant and effortless, before, as a consequence of the Fall, Adam and Eve condemned themselves and their posterity to having to eke an existence out of an unforgiving soil (see Genesis 3:17\u201319). Amos invites us to dream of a lasting and fertile land ready for a plentiful harvest that almost cultivates itself.<\/p>\n
We don’t have to just envision\u00a0such an image as one of the end times. When we live a spirit of Gospel poverty we see the things of daily life as blessings, and we are content with far less. We don’t fall into the rat race of always wanting the latest iPhone, a better car than our neighbors, or a mansion. In short, we realize how blessed we are to have anything at all.<\/p>\n
Let’s ask Our Lord today to help us count out blessings and dream in Christian hope of the blessings that are to come.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a0Amos 9:11\u201315;\u00a0Psalm 85:9ab, 10\u201314;\u00a0Matthew 9:14\u201317.<\/em> See also Friday after Ash Wednesday<\/a>,\u00a022nd Week in Ordinary Time, Friday<\/a>, and\u00a013th Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In today’s First Reading Amos evokes imagery that could take us back to the Garden of Eden: a time where the earth’s blessings were abundant and effortless, before, as a consequence of the Fall, Adam and Eve condemned themselves and their posterity to having to eke an existence out of an unforgiving soil (see Genesis … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[45,36,56,146],"class_list":["post-1456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ordinary-time","tag-saturday","tag-thirteenth-week","tag-year-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-nu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1456\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}