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.
