Ella Gunderson is teenage Catholic girl from Seattle, Washington. In 2004, she went into a Nordstrom’s store to buy a pair of jeans.
However, none of the jeans were pleasing to her taste, lifestyle and liking…
Every style of jeans was either very loose that they would fall down…
… or so tight that she would have to wear them low and thus they would become provocative.
As a Christian, she knew that her body was the temple of the Holy Spirit and that God meant beauty to be pure, inspiring, and not degrading and objectifying!
Instead of just moaning about the situation, Ella decided to act…
She wrote a public letter of complaint to Nordstrom’s…
“Dear Nordstrom, I am an eleven-year-old girl who has tried shopping at your store for clothes (in particular jeans), but all of them ride way under my hips and the next size up, is too big and falls down.”
This experience of Ella Gunderson resonated with unvoiced concern of many teenagers and women across the country, who also believed it was possible to be ‘pretty, without being provocative’.
The letter caused a huge rage to be raised by the world of media…
The media firestorm motivated Nordstrom’s to create a new category of fashion wears for juniors called “Modern and Modest.”
A great Christian endevour was pursued and achieved – all because of the convictions of a Christian girl, who believed in being “pretty, without being provocative!”
To be a Christian in today’s world is a great task, a challenge and a responsibility.
The Gospel of the Day invites and instruct us to live as a True Christian, a True Missionary – just as the Twelve Apostles were sent by Jesus on the mission journey.
Jesus chose 12 apostles and entrusted the great task of spreading His mission of the Kingdom of God.
One of the key issues that the Lord addresses when He sends out His disciples is to be aware of the fact that there will be great possibilities that they would be “rejected”.
However, the Apostles were not to get disheartened by it; rather to be bold and firm to stand against anything that would oppose their mission.
Jesus says to them: “Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet….” (Mk 6: 11)
Jesus warns them that their life as His follower and as a missionary of the Kingdom, would surely meet a lot of opposition…
… many would reject their teachings
… many would even, perhaps persecute them
… many would seek to make them compromise their values
However, in all this, the Apostles were to remain bold, firm and courageous.
They had to fill their hearts with two basic virtues: Dependence on God’s Providence and Firm Perseverance in His ways.
The message of the Gospel is always opposed to the ways and values of the world!
It was so… in the time of Jesus
It was so… also in the time of the Apostles
And it is so… in our own time and culture
To be a Christian, a Missionary in today’s world is indeed a great task, a challenge and a responsibility.
As you would know, Christian faith today is increasingly “rejected”, “compromised” and even and pushed into the corner in our society.
We can either…
…. give in to them
… or just complain about them
… or make efforts to change them
By virtue of our Baptism, we share…
… in the privilege of being called a follower of Christ
… also, in the responsibility to be firm and faithful to our Christian faith.
Today’s gospel reminds us to stand firm in our convictions and make efforts to live a True Christian life?
Is the world transforming me…
… or am I, as a Christian, transforming the world.
FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – JULY 7, 2024
It is not unusual to walk through the subway in New York City during rush hour and hear musicians playing, hoping to earn a few dollars in tips. However, on the morning of January 12, 2007, something extraordinary happened. The world renowned violinist, Joshua Bell, brought his 300 year old Stradivarius into the subway and began playing some of the most difficult works of classical music for the people as they rushed off to work. He did it as an experiment to see if anyone would recognize him or, at least, recognize the music he was playing.
A reporter from the Washington Post went along with him to record what happened. In the time that Joshua Bell played, over one thousand people walked past him. Of all those people, only seven took the time to stop and listen. And only one person recognized him. To the great majority of people rushing off to work that day, Joshua Bell was just another guy playing music in the subway. Most people were oblivious to the great talent that was there regaling them with some of the best classical music ever written.
Isn’t it true that we are often in such a rush to get where we’re going that we fail to see the beauty all around us? Sometimes, where we need to go and what we have to do seem so urgent that it causes us to overlook the extraordinary things taking place all around us. Also, the beauty surrounding us can become so familiar that we take it for granted. We treat the wonders of nature that way. But we can also treat the extraordinary people we pass by or even live with that way. We can fail to see the good in them.
That is what is happening in today’s gospel. Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth after going throughout Galilee preaching and performing great acts of healing. He is going home to the people He grew up with – the people He has known all His life. They are His family and friends who should know Him better than anyone else. But they fail to recognize Him for who He truly is. For thirty years, He had lived among them and worked alongside them. Nonetheless, they never really knew Him. To them, He was nothing more than an ordinary carpenter from a small town. They just couldn’t believe that someone as ordinary as Jesus of Nazareth could be the Messiah. Saint Mark tells us that they were even offended by Him. We can imagine them saying to each other, “Who does this guy think He is?”
The attitude that caused so many people to walk past Joshua Bell in the subway and that caused the villagers of Nazareth to reject Jesus, is on display in today’s world. We hear it from the atheist who says, “If God really exists, why doesn’t He just show Himself?” What they fail to realize is that God’s glory is on display all around us in the beauty of nature and in the goodness of human beings made in His image and likeness. We also hear it when people say that Jesus couldn’t have founded the Catholic Church because it is full of so many ordinary, sinful people. They fail to realize that Jesus’ whole mission was to call sinners to Himself. Just as the Pharisees doubted Jesus was the Messiah because He ate with sinners, so people today doubt the Church is the place where Jesus makes Himself present in the world because we are sinners. We can have the same attitude ourselves when we come to Mass and say that it is boring or that we haven’t been fed. That is because we fail to realize that the Risen Lord is here speaking to us in His word and giving us His flesh and blood in the Eucharist. We want to see an impressive spectacle to convince us that God is real and that He is here. Instead, God prefers to reveal Himself in the everyday, ordinary miracles all around us.
How can we discover this God who is always with us? We can only do it by slowing down. It is so important for us to start the morning with a few minutes of quiet and solitude. Our days can be so busy that we want to rush right into everything that needs to get done. By waking up a few minutes early and sitting alone with our minds raised up to God, we will have a sense of His presence with us. That serenity will carry us through the day and make us more aware of the beauty and goodness that is all around us. And, little by little, we will discover that the ordinary things around us aren’t so ordinary after all.
It is also important for us to stop during the day and spend a few minutes in silence. It is so easy to get carried away by the frantic pace of life. Taking a minute or two to look at a flower or feel the warmth of the sun on our faces makes us more appreciative of our blessings. It also helps put all the activity around us in perspective. Is it really as urgent as it seems to be? Is it worth losing our peace over? Probably not.
The most extraordinary miracle that we can overlook is the presence of Jesus Christ in ordinary bread and wine. The Eucharist teaches us that Jesus wants to be with us and wants to give Himself totally to us. We might be tempted to think that the Creator of the Universe cannot possibly be present in such ordinary bread and wine. But it’s true. He told us so. If we truly want a relationship with the God of love, this is where we’ll find it. And discovering God here, in this ordinary place, we will begin to discover Him everywhere.