Daily Reflections ...

In today’s Gospel, we read about the two demon-possessed men whose affliction has caused them to become so violent that everyone has been driven away in fear. The repulsiveness of their condition has left the men unloved and trapped in a world of loneliness and torment. No one is able to get past, that is, no one except Jesus! He ‘hears the cry of the poor,’ he sees the men as they truly are and he loves them. In awesome power and perfect love, Jesus casts those demons out with just one word and sets the men free.

Who are the people in our world who are trapped in places we cannot pass through? People whose addiction or illness, grief or pain has isolated them to a life of loneliness or torment?

G. K. Chesterton once said “there is the great lesson of Beauty and the Beast, that a thing must be loved before it is lovable”. If we are the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, then it is up to us to do as Jesus did. We are called to ‘hear the cry of the poor’ and, filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, to love those who so many deem unlovable.

Lord Jesus, please give us ears to hear the cry of the poor and to love them as you do. Give us the grace to pass by the things that stand in the way so that we can go to the lonely, the broken and the afflicted with your love today.

by Chantale Wilson