In these days of intense feelings, often hostile rhetoric, and worse, let us be very careful how we speak about others. And most of all, first of all, with utmost confidence in God’s mercy and power, let us pray for them — perhaps especially for those we find it most difficult to love or like.

Saint Mother Teresa, whose feast day we recently celebrated, heard Jesus one day in prayer give what to me is the single greatest commentary on this ”picture.”  In a world increasingly fearful, lonely, and longing for love, it seems so very timely. As you read what He said to her, please know He is saying this now to you and to me. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you hear the voice of the Lord Jesus, the King of glory, the One before whom one real day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord, speak these words very personally to you.

As we eavesdrop on Paul teaching Philemon this week, he’s teaching us too. The world is still divided between “us” and “them” — just read the news. The call on the disciple of Jesus is still to announce the good news that the entire human race has been rescued from the powers of Sin and Death, and the subsequent enslaving forces of division, hatred and more. But not just to announce it. To put the power of the Gospel into effect in every dimension of human life, to act like leaven so as to make the world ever more authentically human.

The most unjust, horrific, hideous act in human history took place on Calvary some two thousand years ago now. There, on that hill, the God who is Love, gave Himself into the hands of the creature He had fashioned out of love for friendship, and was torn to shreds, quite literally. Why? So that we might be rescued from the clutches of the powers of Sin and Death, into whose grip we had fallen as a result of fateful decisions just before Abel’s murder.