Ordinary Time 
Pause
“We belong in a bundle of life. We say, ‘A person is a person through other persons.’ It is not, ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather, ‘I am human because I belong. I participate, I share.’”
from No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu (1999)
Listen
If any of you are suffering, they should pray. If any of you are happy, they should sing. If any of you are sick, they should call for the elders of the church, and the elders should pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.
James 5:13-14
Think
The famous English poet John Donne wrote in a poem from 1624, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” To say that we humans are pieces of the continent and not islands is to say that we are all connected – and are meant to be so.
The writer of the book of James knew this. It is easy to isolate yourself thinking that no one wants to hear your pain. But that is not the case. People are to bear witness to each other’s joy and pain.
Look around you. Where can you celebrate a person’s joy? Where can you sit with a person in their sadness or pain? Do you have news to celebrate or a hurt to acknowledge? Share that with those in your circle.
Kim Crowley
Pray
God of joy and sadness, help me to see all my brothers and sisters around me. Help me to bear witness to their joy and to their pain. May I have the grace and courage to share mine, that others may sit with me. Amen.
Go
Go and remember: you belong to the body of Christ. The body needs you in order to work as it should.
Go out and share your gifts, so that the body of Christ may be the healing love of God to the world.
