Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.
For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace.
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
We are sacraments for one another. When we open our hearts to welcome, appreciate, and love another person, we encounter God in them, and they encounter God in us.
However, like the disciples in today’s Gospel, when we are so full of ourselves and our own concerns for power and prestige, there’s little room for God to become present to us or to those around us.
When we interact with family, co-workers, classmates, friends, or strangers, rather than asking What can I gain from this person?, Jesus invites us to ask: How can I appreciate and love this person?
Yes, this kind of living may lead, as it did for Jesus, to suffering. But wouldn’t we rather live, rejoice, and suffer together than succeed (or fail) alone?
How can you encounter other people today as the sacrament that they are? How can you be a sacrament, revealing God to them?
—Thomas Bambrick, SJ, is a Jesuit scholastic of the Midwest Province studying at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University in Berkeley, CA.
Jesus, our companion and our model,
help us to be sacraments for each other—
encountering God and revealing God
through our welcome, appreciation, and love—
just as you were and are a sacrament for us.
—Thomas Bambrick, SJ
Please share the Good Word with your friends!
