Making a stretch

The texts from the Roman CatholicLectionary today return to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah to reinforce the call to believers to seek a conversion of heart and action as we are motivated by the season of Lent to follow Jesus more closely. Friar Jude Winkler invites us to hear the call of Isaiah about trampling the Sabbath as a query about our life style which may be too full of self and work to pause for the Day of the Lord and be restored and refocused. The pursuit of actions which are self serving is often a consequence of the isolation which is caused by sin. The Gospel from Luke, which Friar Jude notes is likely about the calling of the Evangelist Matthew, offers an example of Jesus method of breaking down the barriers of isolation which exist between people because of life choices or social and economic conditions. Molly O'Gorman Billings of Creighton Universityrecalls the action of a religious sister to get to know the isolated. Our comfort zone may need stretching to bring us into situations where we will encounter Jesus acting with us and through the other to become the light that rises in the darkness as a sign of hope and a confrontation of the isolation in which we sin and seek our own self aggrandizement.