Originally published at The Catholic Thing
The famous Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil is often credited with the saying, “All politics is local.” Now, I’m not particularly interested in the political part of that statement. But I am interested in how it applies to my line of work. You could say that all salvation is local. It happens in particular souls. And you don’t get any more local than that.
Our salvation – yours and mine – does not happen out there, in some other place or in someone else’s life. It doesn’t occur in the media or latest gossip, online or otherwise. It doesn’t depend on our knowing the latest political intrigue or celebrity news. It depends on our personal and interior adherence to the Lord.
But we love to be distracted because this reality can be daunting. We fear that God is too close, too personal. Too local. So we distract ourselves by looking elsewhere, to other people, places, and things. But salvation doesn’t happen somewhere else. It happens locally, where we are. And we shouldn’t choose to be elsewhere.
That’s precisely what’s going on in today’s Gospel. (Luke 13:1-9) The crowd is fascinated with current events: Some people told Jesus about the
