June 23 Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time Mt 10/26-33

Background

We now return after a long hiatus to our year long reading of St. Matthew's Gospel. Today's Gospel continues a theme we have heard often in June -there is no reason to be afraid. God loves us, Jesus loves us, we are of infinite worth because of that love. Nothing, no threats, no evil tongues, no sickness, no failures, no disasters can separate us from that love. It is one thing of course to profess this faith, which we can easily do, trippingly on our lips and another thing to live that way. In today's Gospel Jesus offers us the possibility of the joy and happiness which comes from taking his promises seriously.

Story

Once upon a time that there was a young woman who won every short story contest when she was in high school. She decided that she would be a great novelist some day and wanted to major in creative writing in college. Her parents and siblings ridiculed her. Who do you think you are they said and then added the clincher what will people say. So she majored in primary education because her family said that every woman should have a useful career skill. She flunked out of college because she hated it. Then she went to a local community college and studied literature. The family made fun of her again. What good will that ever do, they said. How much money do writers make. She finally graduated after she won a prize in the college's literary contest. You'd think it was Harvard or Notre Dame the family joked. Big deal. They wanted her to graduate school in business. She absolutely refused. The tried to get her seat on the Board of Trade. She turned them down flat. Instead she got a job as a waitress and lived in a one room compartment where her only companion was her computer. She might as well be a nun the family said. We give up on her.At twenty five she published her first novel which won the Pulitzer Prize and sold three million copies. Her family took credit for her success. We always had faith in her genius, they said.