ISSL Reflections January 22 2023 Isaiah 58:6–10 Post 3

VII.
We have spent time this week considering fasting and how it calls attention to behaviors we should not practice and behaviors we should practice.

Keeping in mind the lifestyle recommended here, pay attention to two other images presented here, that of light, and that of a yoke.

VIII.
Isaiah 58:6-10 (New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition)

Is not this the fast that I choose:
       to loose the bonds of injustice,
       to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
       and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry
       and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them
       and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
       and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you;
       the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
       you shall cry for help, and he will say, “Here I am.”

If you remove the yoke from among you,
       the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
if you offer your food to the hungry
       and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
       and your gloom be like the noonday.

IX.
What yokes do you hear the prophet calling on the people to break?

What kinds of yokes do you encounter that the prophet might call on you to break or help to break?

Do you have any experience of the kind of light that can “rise in the darkness” even as yokes you see others bearing or you bear paint the world in so many shades of “gloom

charles
{ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est}


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