Speak Lord: As One

In the second reading on Sunday, for Sunday coming, the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time, we hear St Paul continue to offer advice to Timothy, calling him to holiness and to a still more faithful service of the Lord.

As a man dedicated to God, you must aim to be saintly and religious, filled with faith and love, patient and gentle. Fight the good fight of the faith and win for yourself the eternal life to which you were called when you made your profession and spoke up for the truth in front of many witnesses. Now, before God the source of all life and before Christ, who spoke up as a witness for the truth in front of Pontius Pilate, I put to you the duty of doing all that you have been told, with no faults or failures, until the Appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ,

who at the due time will be revealed
by God, the blessed and only Ruler of all,
the King of kings and the Lord of lords,
who alone is immortal,
whose home is in inaccessible light,
whom no man has seen and no man is able to see:
to him be honour and everlasting power. Amen.

1 Timothy 6:11-16

• When have you made a profession (of faith or of purpose)?

Many of us were too young to make it at what might seem the normative time, ie at our baptism. And we may now be too old to remember doing so at our Confirmation!

But we have the opportunity to renew that commitment each year at the Easter Vigil or Easter Sunday masses. And perhaps there have been other times – perhaps at marriage, perhaps when commissioned for service in the church, perhaps at other times of commitment.

• To what/whom do you feel committed and why?
• What difference does it make to you, and to others?
• Who is committed to you? And what difference does that make, to you and to them?

One of a series of plaques depicting the Creed. Musée Dobrée, Nantes. (c) 2016, Allen Morris.