Tuesday, 13 April, 2004

We continue with pieces from “Holy People” by Gordon Lathrop.



The liturgical assemblies we have been considering, assemblies constituted through Baptism and continually renewed through the use of the Scriptures and the Eucharist, take place amid the many peoples and cultures of the world. Present in specific localities, in dialogue with local cultures – with all the ways in which groups are formed, time is kept, location is known, wisdom transmitted, communal survival cultivated – these assemblies nonetheless propose an alternate way to see the world itself, in the light of God’s great mercy. One way to speak of that vocation to the alternative vision is to say that the assemblies are called to holiness.



Holiness is not a “better than thou-ness.” Holiness is the journey and the path upon which we take our steps into this world as people who have heard the stories of God’s faithfulness in Scripture and through the sacraments and have had our lives pulled in a new direction. The assembly of people who gather for worship could be doing something else and be running out into the world with many sorts of agendas for life. But we gather for worship. We gather to stand/sit/kneel with others as we all await news that is the power to transform life. We gather expecting to be taken up into a way that may not be the way things were yesterday but will be a new way to experience today. Worship has everything to do with vision…our faithful viewing of the life as it is offered to us from the open tomb and how it contrasts with the way things usually are in our world. Holiness…is not a bad word or an outdated word. It is a radical presentation of the life handed to us by God.



Connection: Don’t be afraid of being called into a holy life…and don’t think that this means we are to right a “high horse.” In fact, it means we get off the horse and enter into the lives of those around us in a resurrected kind of way.



Remind us, O God, of how you come to us within the ordinary events of our life. Remind us so that we may see within this day how we are sent as your holy people to be involved in the very mundane activities in life with a new sense of worth and purpose as we follow the way of your beloved Jesus. Amen.