Friday of the Twenty-ninth Week in Ordinary Time
(Ephesians 4:1-6; Luke 12:54-59)
In his poem “The White-Tailed Hornet,” Robert Frost observes that humans do well to compare themselves with higher beings. If they do not, he predicts that they will suffer one catastrophe after another. Frost’s lines are worth remembering: “As long on earth/ As our comparisons were stoutly upward/ With gods and angels, we were men at least,/ But little lower than the gods and angels./ But once comparisons were yielded downward,/ Once we began to see our images/ Reflected in the mud and even dust./ ‘Twas disillusion upon disillusion.” The passage from the Letter to the Ephesians today bears a similar wisdom and elegance.
Ephesians urges its readers “to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received.” It claims that they have been chosen by God to be members of God’s family. As God’s children then, they are to live not only peacefully as if the absence of quarrelling was all that matters, but in such unity that all strive to have a like mind and heart based on truth. It is a tall order, but it can be accomplished with God’s grace which is “over all and through all and in all.”
Anger is a definite roadblock to peace and unity. We must get over our outrage with what others appear to say and do. In place of it, we should pray for the supposed opposition and then try to dialogue with it.
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