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Year A: 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time Second Reading: Romans 8: 35, 37-39 This is one occasion when it might be worth using the reading straight from a Bible and not from the Missal! The translation used in the Missal has been adapted so that it stands alone - but in the Bible, it follows the powerful words “Who can bring any accusation against those God has chosen? When God grants saving justice, who can condemn?” In a series of questions St Paul asks over and over - if God is with us, what can possibly be against us? Can this? Can that? Can anything stand between us and the love of God as we have found it revealed in Jesus? And naturally, the answer he comes up with is “no”! There is nothing on earth - in heaven - no power - nothing that is greater than that love of God. This is not to say that we won’t feel overwhelmed sometimes. It does not mean that we will be spared the suffering that is part of life on earth. As Christians, we are not put into a safe cocoon so that we never have to share the pain of the world. In fact, quite the opposite! As Christians, we - like our Lord, live in the middle of it all. Like Jesus, we meet the hungry - the cold - the lost in those we meet everyday. A very few of us are called - like Jesus - to live life in the raw - and to die alongside the poor and the weak. These are the things that prove our discipleship. They are not given by God to test us to destruction - but help us to “test our faith”. It is only by living in the world with all its difficulties and realising that none of them can separate us from God that we can really begin to appreciate just what we have been given. What does it mean for me?
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