LITURGY

Thirty - third Sunday Year C

 

WORD OF GOD
But for you who fear my name,
the sun of righteousness will shine outwith healing in its rays.
(Malachi 3:20)

WORD FOR TODAY
As the Church’s year draws close to its end, we are reminded that the fruits of faith cannot be stored in the bank and drawn out in instalments. Faith is something that has to be lived day in and day out. The promises which it makes to Christians are for those who endure.

WORDS FOR WORSHIP
In Jesus' own words we pray for endurance and we ask the Lord to keep us free from temptation and safe from all evil as we say:
Our Father....

FAITH IN FOCUS: DAILY SIGNS
We don’t need to look to the future to find signs of the end of our world. It’s happening every day before our very eyes.
When Jerusalem was destroyed, the Jews’ world was destroyed along with it. We have the same sort of experiences in our lives. We experience the end of many things and the loss of many people in a lifetime. The physical world as we know it can be destroyed by flood, hurricane, fire or earthquake. The whole earth does not need to be destroyed, just our little part of it, for us to know what Jesus is talking about.
Our social world can be destroyed by final arguments ending in divorce, being disowned by family, shunned or treated as an outcast. Our political world can be destroyed by war. Our economic world can collapse due to depression, recession, or unemployment, not to mention famine, hunger, disease and epidemics. We live in many worlds or spheres of meaning, and any of them can collapse at any moment.
What Jesus is giving in today’s gospel is not a script for what will happen in some future era. It is a symbolic account of how all created things will come to a climax under the judgement of God. We’ve already seen stars falling from the sky, persecutions, famines, revolutions etc. They happen each day. The important thing is how each generation views these normal things and how we learn from them.
It is possible to become so wrapped up in transient things (like the people admiring the beauty of the Temple) that we forget the purpose of our existence and we lose sight of the daily signs. We are here to serve God by serving each other. This is what we will be judged on. Will we stop living, loving, caring and giving when the end of our own little world comes upon us? Will we see the wars, famines, earthquakes etc as a wake-up call for Christian action or just something to watch on our TV screens and then talk about the next day?
Disasters, whether personal or global, are opportunities for growth. They summon us to ask the deeper questions about why we are here and how God intends us to respond. We can join the doom-mongers and the armchair commentators, or we can show that our faith has endurance and can bring good out of evil.

TO CONTACT US: OUR LADY OF LOURDES FLEMING FIELD SHOTTON  COLLIERY DURHAM DH6 2JQ