DUST

 

The title of my homily is, “Dust.”

It’s a word that appears in today’s gospel. If you’re not accepted in some house or some town -  shake the dust of that place from your feet.

Dust – DUST – koniortos KONIORTOS in Greek – flying dust.

As I read that I wondered if Jesus ever sat back inside a house and watched dust floating around the room.

Hopefully all of us have done that every once in a while.

Did he think about dust? Did he know about dust? Did he ever see his mom or Martha or Mary – or Joseph worry about dust in the house or carpenter shop – and do some dusting.

As a metaphor did he think about how words or sentiments float around a room – and they land on us?

They – hurts and helps - land on us silently and subtly – and become part of us.

If they are positive can we rejoice in them; if they are negative can we dust them off the feet of our being?

1.5 grams of skin flakes shakes off of us every day. How much of each other’s flakes - shakes off of us with our daily words – and how we treat one another?

At the end of a day – calmly before falling off to sleep – to reflect on how we treated the folks we were treated with that day. Like today’s first reading how Joseph’s father and brothers treated one another. Not too good – but rather real.

"Sorry" and “Thank you” are two great night prayers