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About the Author

Nancy Casey is a HC graduate of 1985. She received an M.T.S. from Weston School of Theology in 1990 and is currently working as a Campus Minister and Religion Teacher at East Catholic High School in Manchester, CT.

Thinking Out Loud

God calls us to courageous thought and action

Change is everywhere and always present in our lives whether we pay attention to it or not. Every once in awhile an area donut chain will try out a new breakfast item for "a limited time only." Will people like it? Will they buy it? Is it worth it to change the current way of doing things? In time, and with minimal impact to our lives, we find out if the change was "accepted" or not by looking at the menu selection, and all that was asked of us was to be courageous enough to try something new.

Not all change sneaks in and out of our life that way. History tells its stories of "far-out" ideas which caused many headaches and heartaches, but which are now accepted as truth. For example, the earth is round and not flat; bacteria and toxins in the body cause illness and not evil spirits. It usually takes humanity a long time to fully absorb new ideas, doesn't it? Change requires courage both in thought and in response. That is why, when the time came that God should offer the world a new idea in the person of Jesus, it met with resistance.

In this week's reading from Acts of the Apostles, we peer into one such moment of resistance and the human fear and frailty that lies behind it. St. Paul is on a missionary journey to Antioch. After listening to the word of God in the synagogue, he is moved to make an address to the listeners proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the promised Messiah. His words are so convincingly charged with the substance of his own faith that the people listen, so much so, that on the following Sabbath, "almost the whole city (including now-Jewish listeners) gathered to hear the word of the Lord (v 44.)" In the mix, were also those who contradicted or resisted what Paul was saying" because, we are told, they were "filled with jealousy."(v 45) Of what were they jealous? Perhaps they were jealous of the state of freedom from which Paul's heart spoke because that would mean that they were uncomfortable with their own lack of freedom. Perhaps they were jealous of his enthusiasm because that would mean that he was experiencing a happiness that they were not experiencing? Almost in passing, Luke, the writer of Acts, shows us how troublesome change can be because it makes us uncomfortable. Change provokes us to look deep inside ourselves and do some housekeeping while we look. Through change, God calls us to courageous thought and action.

We all know how much courage it takes to throw things out, in our homes, our offices when we are not ready to let go because, after all, what do with "the new" space we have created? Do we fill it with the same old sort of things, or do we re-arrange and re-create our thoughts, our space, and our world? When God comes to us in our personal lives with a phenomenally new idea, how do we respond? Do we have a knee-jerk reaction, or do we thoughtfully make room for it, uncomfortable though it may be, just to see where God may be leading us? Is there room enough in our hearts to still hear the messengers and the message of good news: that our truest and deepest calling is to be people of love? Every lesson in life, every change, even becoming aware of our jealousies and those things that make us uncomfortable, can move us toward that goal. May God give us all the courage to accept change courageously? God's message of love moves onward, as it has for 2000 years, and if we don't hear it today, I believe there is always hope that we will hear it tomorrow.