Monday, October 11, 2021

 (Optional) Memorial of Saint John XXIII, pope

(Romans 1:1-7; Luke 11:29-32)

 In today’s first reading from the beginning of the Letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes of an “obedience of faith.”  The expression sounds like oxymoron -- two words of opposing ideas put together to stimulate thought.  A student might ask, “What does faith have to do with obedience?”  Faith, after all, is trust.  Obedience concerns following another’s command. 

Paul will say later in the letter that a person is justified by faith.  But his idea of faith or trust goes beyond intellectual assent to religious truth.  Faith includes a commitment to Jesus’ way of love.  It is not following another’s command but following in the other’s path of life.  For Christians faith is coming to know Jesus by loving others as he loved.

Today the Church celebrates Pope St. John XXIII.  It is not the anniversary of his death but of the opening Second Vatican Council.  Pope John convoked the council as a way to share the truth of Christ with, as he put it, the “human family.”  Then as now, sixty years later, people were separated by ideologies and false teachings.  John wanted the whole world to follow the way of Christ’s love.

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