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Jesus
sent out these twelve after instructing them thus, "Do not go into
pagan territory or enter a Samaritan town. Go rather to the lost
sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, make this proclamation:
'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Cure the sick, raise the
dead, cleanse lepers, drive out demons. Without cost you have
received; without cost you are to give. Do not take gold or
silver or copper for your belts; no sack for the journey, or a second
tunic, or sandals, or walking stick. The laborer deserves his
keep. Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy
person in it, and stay there until you leave. As you enter a
house, wish it peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace come
upon it; if not, let your peace return to you. Whoever will not receive
you or listen to your words--go outside that house or town and
shake
the dust from your feet. Amen, I say to you, it will be more
tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment
than for that town."
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George
Malley finally discovers why he has such unbelievable intellectual
powers in the final session of the movie "Phenomenon," and also
discovers that everyone
should learn from his experience. Such
learning should come, he says, not from actual physical study of his
brain, but
from what he had become as a result of his situation. "I
think I’m what everybody can be," he says
in this session of "Phenomenon." "I’m
the possibility. What I’m talking
about
is the human spirit. That’s the
challenge."
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"Most
people grow old,"
French moralist Marquis de Vauvenargues said, "with only a small
set of ideas,
which they have not discovered for themselves." Feeling not
at all comfortable when we wander outside our self-defined
walls, we hang on to the security of our own beliefs. In reality,
we do not want to expand our
minds because it might mean doing and thinking things that would
require real
work. In fact, most people have their
minds set by the time they are eighteen.
Jesus challenged such a feeling, especially with his apostles, as he sent them out into the world. "Without cost you have received," he tells them, "without cost you are to give." And so they were not to worry about money, or clothing, or lodging, or how they were to say the message. It was no doubt a far cry from what they had learned early on in their lives concerning life and living. Being a disciple of Jesus was a truly mind-expanding experience. We should learn from Jesus and George Malley in their desire to expand the human spirit. They call us to recognize what we can do not only for our own intellectual lives, but for our world--to care for it, to love it, to lead it to a higher plane. There are many ways that we can expand the human spirit, but perhaps the primary one is the one that Jesus suggests--to give of ourselves. If more of us would learn to give to others, our own little world would expand, and the world around us would benefit. |
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THOUGHT
What
practical ways help us to "expand the human
spirit"?
PRAYER Good and gracious God,
you have given us the
grace to be more than we are right now. There is
great potential in all of us. Help us
recognize that we can do much more good than we are doing right
now, and lead us to want to do it. Be
with us, we pray.
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©2007
Capuchin Province of Mid-America
Fr. Mike Scully is a member of the Capuchin Province of Mid-America |