Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time (2)

Respect

respecting others lifestyles

dem society trade respect for respect

very few lifestyles draw disrespect

most disrespected those who disrespect other

Respect. easily become a soft type of hate.

greedly back ally trade our neighbor’s souls for the fluffy soft bag of silver coins of respect.

Paradox

only paradoxical b/c we post 1960s confuse love with softness and hatred with hardness

love willing good of the other, hatred opposite

BUT can both be hard or soft

rightly disciplining your child is tender love

respect supporting our friends drug lifestlye is burning hatred

softness/hardness nothing to do with love or hatred.

Respect can be that soft bag of Judas’s silver coins

Respect a good,

diabolically traded immortal soul

Often we (myself) trip into faustian trade.

respect lifestyles, b/c get along over their good

opinions, getting along, avoiding conflict on scale; weigh it as more imp than soul!!!

everlasting soul much more than fleeting fluff o respect

bargain souls to devil in exchange for getting their respect and giving it.

soft smothering cuddly form of diabolic hatred

their sins don’t correct so to sinfully get respect

a paltry trade.

Scripture today warns us

commandment, as second reading, summed up: love

willing their good.

must willing to disrespect to correct

if place respect over correct

and don’t warn

God warns hold us responsible for the sins of others

Clergy

Even harsher for clergy and appointed prophets like Ezekiel in the first reading

love higher so disrespect more regularly as he told his prophet

not self righteous

if not, as Scripture says, liars

instrument of God’s righteousness not our own, which is nothing!!

office, not the person behind it

only right through Him, with Him, and in Him

its not like the Pharisaical way

not to stand aloof but to risk our very respect to heal.

How easy is it for a bishop or priest

to not ruin respect of parishioners

to not risk confrontation

to keep the collection plate high to avoid bankruptcy

to not have to deal with negative letters to pope or bishop

In short, how easy trade respect for care for souls

so I preach against the temptation of hateful respect as much (and even more) at myself than anyone else

but for common priesthood to

Don’t hear what not saying

Obviously the Scripture message is not to be correcting constantly or pettily.

As st. Augustine says, there is a time and place

but let it only be concern for souls that holds you back from correcting,

not evil respect being valued over their soul

not fear for your reputation with them

not cowardly avoiding conflict.

Conclusion

Right time, right relation, and place need to correct rather than respect

Not easy

sure: little courage required to call out what common society still disagrees with: misusing the poor, slavery, arrogance, racism, lying, stealing, murder.

certainly we should love the murdered, liar, and greedy by disrespecting their life choices, but do we extend our loving disrespect to controversies?

Courage is more required calling out issues where politicians in the last few decades wickedly found ways to gain power by solidifying divides in moral issues:

genocide of abortion, sodomy, adultery, and as pope Francis past few years called the US bishops to tackle: transgenderism.

Our brothers and sisters are jumping off spiritual cliffs with these things, and there is a vast mob cheering them on!

hearing only cheers, how would they know to fear? Their fault is ours if thats the only voice

can they really take the Church’s teaching gravely seriously if we don’t?

don’t let hateful mob’s chorus of respect ring clearly, offer the discordant voice of love’s disrespect.

NOTES:

Why the Church corrects and how

out of love

risk to those who dont

need for 1 church for excommunication

sentinel