Thursday of the
Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Genesis 44:18-21.23b-29.45:1-5; Matthew 10:7-15)
The women just completed an adult religious education
program. She expressed her confidence
about what she had learned by saying, “The next time Jehovah Witnesses came to
my door, they should be prepared to sit down and talk for an hour.”
Door-to door canvassing is so associated with Jehovah
Witnesses that it is scarcely considered a Catholic thing to do. Yet Jesus in today’s gospel seems to tell his
apostles to do just that. “As you enter a house,” he says, “wish it
peace.” But contemporary intuition, in
this case at least, is not wrong. Jesus
is prescribing a manner for the missionary to find a place of lodging, not a
way to evangelize. Although there may be
value in speaking of God’s love in visits to households, the new evangelization as proclaimed by
recent popes is more about intimating that love by example.
In our postmodern culture everybody is said to be free to
believe what she or he finds meaningful.
This implies toleration of different belief systems. In this way our society avoids conflict without
absolutizing any doctrine about which there is no general agreement. However, by itself toleration hardly says anything
about divine revelation in Jesus Christ.
It would be contradictory to force belief in Christ, but, as the popes
suggest, we should not content ourselves merely with allowing each individual
to believe whatever he or she likes.
Rather, we are to impress upon others the superiority of Catholic
Christianity by the quality and tenor of our lives.
