Today’s First and Second Readings show the two extremes in which a believer be found in serving Our Lord by sharing his message: alone and abandoned in the mud at the mercy of evil and injustice, or spurred on by the example and help of a “cloud of witnesses” who show that the path of belief is the right one. We all experience moments in the mud and moments enthused by our faith and that of our fellow believers.<\/p>\n
Jeremiah in today’s First Reading was the victim of the very division that Our Lord would later forewarn\u00a0his disciples, yet Jeremiah in the end was rescued through the intercession of just men. When we face division and strife over transmitting the Gospel\u00a0we should not become discouraged, because\u00a0Our Lord suffered such things first, as well as many believers who came before us. In moments of enthusiasm we mustn’t forget that there will be moments of the Cross, but in moments of the Cross we should be bolstered by memories of our moments of enthusiasm.<\/p>\n
In all circumstances we need Our Lord’s help, just not in the same way. Let’s ask him to help us in fair weather or foul.<\/p>\n
Readings: Jeremiah 38:4\u20136, 8\u201310; Psalm 40:2\u20134, 18; Hebrews 12:1\u20134; Luke 12:49\u201353.<\/em>\u00a0See also 15th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday, Year II<\/a>,\u00a029th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday<\/a>, and\u00a015th Week in Ordinary Time, Monday<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today’s First and Second Readings show the two extremes in which a believer be found in serving Our Lord by sharing his message: alone and abandoned in the mud at the mercy of evil and injustice, or spurred on by the example and help of a “cloud of witnesses” who show that the path of … 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":[121,45,15,76],"class_list":["post-1597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cycle-c","tag-ordinary-time","tag-sunday","tag-twentieth-week"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-pL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597","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=1597"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1603,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1597\/revisions\/1603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}