Some
Thoughts on the Liturgy
TOLERANCE
OF OTHERS
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Paul the Apostle expected the end of the world to be during
his lifetime most probably
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and here in the reading speaks about always being with the
Lord
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obviously, the Lord is yet to come, but the stress for us is
that the Lord is always with us now and after our deaths
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We begin a weekday consideration of Luke’s Gospel today
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here, Jesus spoke with the conviction of God his Father being
with him in the synagogue of Nazareth at the beginning of his
public life
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and what does Jesus speak of with that power of God?
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and what caused the worshippers in Nazareth to go from honor
to hatred, to
the
point of wanting to kill him?
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it was what might be called “religious tolerance”
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Jewish people were strong into the theme of election:
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throughout the Old Testament, God had told them that they were
the chosen race
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here, Jesus opens up the possibility of salvation for all
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not only did Jesus seem to prefer the attitude of people in
another town, namely, Capernaum
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but there were people outside that God helped in the past—the
widow of Zeraphath in the days of Elijah and Naaman the Syrian
in days of Elisha—who were foreigners, not Jews, and Jesus
was saying that the power of God worked with them as well
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An obvious application for a person who is pursuing the
spiritual life is the whole thought of religious tolerance
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God is working with others who are not of our belief, indeed
not even Christian as well
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and on Labor Day, as we all work side by side so to speak, we
are called to be tolerant of the others, and aware that God is
working through all of us, no matter what our belief about God
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But I believe a more important application is one closer to
home
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tolerance of other Catholics who may not agree with how we
think
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tolerance of other people who have different opinions from us
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tolerance of family me
mbers
who are over 20 and have chosen different roads than the ones
we wanted them to choose
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there are some real lessons to be learned about tolerance in
our lives, I believe
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Tolerance is a very good topic for us to meditate on
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indeed with Paul, we believe that we are always with the Lord
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but so are other people, and we must celebrate the fact
together.
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