Tag Archives: testimony

Will you sing?

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The refrain from today’s psalm is “I will sing of your salvation.” Will you? If you are the average Catholic your answer might be “yes” but I wonder what you answer would be if the question was “Will you sing of your salvation outside of Mass or your shower?”  Granted we all sound great in the shower, but we are more reluctant to sing at all apart from the choir of the faithful or our personal Niagara Falls.

Are you willing to sing of your salvation, to give witness, in the public forum when all eyes are upon you? How about in the local WalMart or Wegmans? Your average Catholic only needs to stand next to a born-again, evangelical Christian to understand how private we are about our life in faith.  Of course, you’re thinking, “All that public praying and witnessing, that’s their thing. Our faith is more discrete, more private, more, well…… more sophisticated than asking someone in the local WalMart if they had been saved. Ours is a faith steeped in tradition, liturgy, sacraments. This is how we serve the Lord.” 

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Giving Testimony

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The gospel readings so far this week have been from Luke 21, a chapter that is prophetic, apocalyptic, and sometimes seen as Wisdom literature. The context is in the middle of the last week of Jesus’ life. As the disciples are admiring the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus tells them: “All that you see here—the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.” (Luke 21:6) Jesus offers a description of this time – a description that was the final verse of yesterday’s gospel: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.  There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues from place to place; and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.” (vv.10-11) Continue reading →

The Power of Testimony

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In today’s gospel we have a simple story of an encounter between Jesus and a leper. The leper did him homage and said: “Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.” Jesus indeed desired to cure the leper and the man was made clean. Then Jesus said: “See that you tell no one, but go show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.” Continue reading →

Testimony: Advent context

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john-the-baptistThe 3rd Sunday in Advent continues to feature John the Baptist as the herald and forerunner of the Messiah. The Reading for the Third Sunday of Lent is John 1:6-8, 19-28 (shown below in bold italics) – but it seemed good to me to also show the more continuous context of the Gospel according to John:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be 4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; 5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. Continue reading →

To give testimony…

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john-the-baptistThe 3rd Sunday in Advent continues to feature John the Baptist as the herald and forerunner of the Messiah. The Reading for the Third Sunday of Lent in John 1:6-8, 19-28 (shown in italics) – but it seemed good to me to also show the more continuous context of the Gospel according to John:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be 4 through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; 5 the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 6 A man named John was sent from God. 7 He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. Continue reading →

A Light to the Nations – giving voice to Faith

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light2nationsOver the last several Sundays I have been connecting the readings beginning with Holy Family Sunday.  St. Paul gave us advice on being a holy family: to put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and over all these, love. (cf. Col 3:12-13). And so I encourage you to use your family to practice those virtues, to become the embodiment of those virtues. Then on Epiphany Sunday, the message was to reveal those virtues to the world through your life – to become the epiphany of Christ to others. The Feast of the Baptism of the Lord followed in which the prophet Isaiah’s word says that in our baptism we are formed as a covenant the people – a vow, a promise, a bond, a connection that binds us to the promise and the power of Christ on one side and to the world on the other.

And so with good intent and hopeful hearts we work away in our personal lives and in our families – to be the person, the family, the witnesses to heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, and over all these, love. We want those virtues in our lives and in our families, but have we been practicing them? Have been talking about them within the family. I suspect most of us pray about it, we work at it, we succeed, we fail, we start over… mostly silently.  And think about it. If we are hesitant to speak about it within the safety of home, how likely are we to testify about it all in the company of others.? Continue reading →