MORE THAN A SLAVE, A BROTHER!
--> 23 rd Sunday Year C September 8, 2013 MORE THAN A SLAVE, A BROTHER! Today is a day of contrasts, tenderness, generosity, and mercy. The Book of Wisdom (first reading) contrasts the ways of the Lord and the ways of man. While we can fathom the “timid deliberations” of man, we cannot that easily “conceive what the Lord intends.” But although God’s ways are indeed, not like man’s ways, we proclaimed the conviction of our faith together with tenderness right after the first reading: “In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge.” But what does the conviction of faith in a God of mystery and tenderness lead us to, we might ask? Let the second reading show us in concrete … There goes Paul writing to Philemon, interceding with the same tenderness of Christian charity, on behalf of Onesimus, once a slave, but now a brother in the Lord. I write from a place where I spent a great part of my younger years, both as formand and form...