Fr. Tom McKenna of the Eastern Province of the Congregation of the Mission offers some shifts that occur when people begin to envision their world more as God sees it.

Sometimes we call them prophets, people who begin to speak God’s words and be lobbyists for God’s causes. Other times we call them witnesses, individuals who stand up and give testimony to the new things they’ve realized and then, prodded by The Spirit, step out to act on their changed vision. These are the people who let themselves be stretched, who reach out for that something just beyond them. These are the women and men who don’t confine reality to the box in which they hold it, who don’t cling for dear life to their old frames of reference. They let the Spirit ‘stand them up on their feet.’

In a reflection “Up on Your Feet!”  that first appeared on FamVin, he draws on the life of Ezekiel as someone who gets lifted up on his feet by the Spirit of God. He then makes a connection to today:

It’s not hard to catch crossovers to the present day. Can the newness and the unexpectedness of God’s Spirit manage to break through in 2018? Can we learn from these neighbors who refuse to look beyond their hometown certainties? Can we be supple enough to let go of the habitual and be vulnerable enough to the unfamiliar coming from The Spirit — this Holy Spirit who is with us but is also always just out beyond us, just coming around the corner.

This lesson certainly rings true in our social and political world where we’re challenged to be nimble before The Spirit’s prodding, forever nudging us toward the values of Jesus’ Kingdom from whatever direction they arise. Case in point: the other day I spotted a bumper sticker that proclaimed, “Don’t Fox the News!” But there’s a way in which another sticker, “Don’t CNN the News” could also fit. Both could be bearing something of God’s touch which I refuse to feel because I’m hunkered down on my present take on how the world operates.

Might that warning also apply to what we do when we come together to listen to God’s Word and when we stand around the Eucharistic table? Might the prompt to open my ears prevail as I listen to what I take year after year to be the “same-old, same-old” Bible readings? Might that prod apply just as much to the Eucharistic ritual itself, this lifting up of the bread and wine which I share in so regularly that I miss what and who is being offered – and, more importantly, the why of it, the Lord’s love pouring out for us and the whole world.

He concludes with a question…

Can we let ourselves feel the prod of that Spirit and so stand a little taller in our pursuit of Jesus’ dream — His Father’s Kingdom of Peace and Justice and Love showing up here on earth, as it is in heaven. Can we let that Spirit “stand us up on our feet?”

Read the full short reflection as it first appeared on FamVin.

Many men and women today associate themselves with the Eastern Province of the Congregation of the Mission and its various ministries.

If you would like to learn more about the ordinary men and women influenced with the Vincentian Way of Life, visit a series of stories about awakening to the Vincentian Vision.