Monday of the Third Week of Easter
Do not work for food that perishes…
Jn 6:27
Chapter 5
A BETTER KIND OF POLITICS
THE EXCERCISE OF POLITICAL LOVE
A love that integrates and unites
190. Political charity is also expressed in a spirit of openness to everyone. Government leaders should be the first to make the sacrifices that foster encounter and to seek convergence on at least some issues. They should be ready to listen to other points of view and to make room for everyone. Through sacrifice and patience, they can help to create a beautiful polyhedral reality in which everyone has a place. Here, economic negotiations do not work. Something else is required: an exchange of gifts for the common good. It may seem naïve and utopian, yet we cannot renounce this lofty aim.
It is so appropriate that the theme of our United Catholic Appeal this year is “Abound in Hope.” For the work of the Diocese of Amarillo in the coming months will indeed be to reawaken and strengthen hope as we move out of pandemic and into a genuine renewal of the life of the Church in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle.
Bishop Patrick J. Zurek
How do you eat an elephant?…There is an elephant sitting in our midst…Every time that we acknowledge a hurt, or disappointment, or an anger, we take a bite of that elephant and it gets a little bit smaller…I am humbly begging you to join me in sharing in the cost of ministry of our other parishes in our diocese who also have elephants sitting in their midst…
Father Tony’s UCA Appeal
In recent homilies Bishop Zurek has made it clear that the standard for love and unity in our diocese should be the encyclical of Pope Francis, Fratelli Tutti. Paragraph #190 tells us that,
leaders should be the first to make the sacrifices that foster encounter and to seek convergence on at least some issues. They should be ready to listen to other points of view and to make room for everyone. Through sacrifice and patience, they can help to create a beautiful polyhedral reality in which everyone has a place.
Bishop Zurek, who is shepherding the “elephant in the room”, should reflect on this and join our Rector as he attempts to move us, “out of pandemic and into a genuine renewal of the life of the Church in Amarillo“.
My prayer for today is that Bishop Zurek stops dishing out the mandatory, “food that perishes”, in the form of the “Quota”, and makes it possible for us to join Father Tony in working for, “food that endures for eternal life”, by allowing us to freely pledge to the United Catholic Appeal.
Catholic Bicycle 