In this season of Advent, this blog will continue to follow the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church. I would welcome comment.

 Reading 1, Romans 10:9-18

9 If you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and if you believe with your heart that God raised him from the dead, then you will be saved. 10 It is by believing with the heart that you are justified, and by making the declaration with your lips that you are saved. 11 When scripture says: No one who relies on this will be brought to disgrace, 12 it makes no distinction between Jew and Greek: the same Lord is the Lord of all, and his generosity is offered to all who appeal to him, 13 for all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.

14 How then are they to call on him if they have not come to believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard of him? And how will they hear of him unless there is a preacher for them? 15 And how will there be preachers if they are not sent? As scripture says: How beautiful are the feet of the messenger of good news.

How beautiful are the feet of the messengers

16 But in fact they have not all responded to the good news. As Isaiah says: Lord, who has given credence to what they have heard from us? 17 But it is in that way faith comes, from hearing, and that means hearing the word of Christ. 18 Well then, I say, is it possible that they have not heard? Indeed they have: in the entire earth their voice stands out, their message reaches the whole world.

 Gospel, Matthew 4:18-22

18 As he was walking by the Lake of Galilee he saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were making a cast into the lake with their net, for they were fishermen. 19 And he said to them, ‘Come after me and I will make you fishers of people.’ 20 And at once they left their nets and followed him.

21 Going on from there he saw another pair of brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John; they were in their boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. 22 And at once, leaving the boat and their father, they followed him.

 Although much is uncertain in the history of early Christianity, scholars are reasonably sure that the letter of Paul to Roman Christians was written around 50 CE, and the Gospel according to Matthew around 90 CE. Both documents display clearly the notoriously evangelical nature of the Jesus movement. Matthew ascribes the impetus to Jesus himself, whom he depicts as sending out disciples to announce the arrival of God’s kingdom, and to bring people (spiritually) together in repentance and expectation. Paul writes of the generosity of God, which is intended to be known by all people, regardless of race, through the story of the crucified and risen Jesus.

 In the long history of Christian evangelism there are regrettable actions and practices. For example the current identification of large numbers of evangelical Christians in the USA with authoritarian capitalism, shows how evangelical energies can be corrupted. A similar corruption can be seen in the identification of late 19^th century missions with European imperialism.

 Nevertheless the conviction that one has a duty to communicate to others, across the boundaries of race and culture, a joy in God, is a surely a noble impulse. Others will cross such boundaries for commercial gain or national hegemony, but only religious people and philosophers have done it for the good of others.

Yet, as soon as I write “the good of others” questions arise: who are believers to think they know what is good for anyone else? Doesn’t this impulse suggest a reluctance to learn from others? Sometimes there has been arrogance, and blindness to the value of other convictions, but more often a readiness for the “good news” to be expressed in new ways by new believers.

 I’ve been reading Dermott MacCulloch’s “History of Christianity” which covers a vast canvas of times and places, showing how diversely different churches express the one revelation of God’s love, in the story of Jesus Christ.

 In Advent, Christians celebrate the “arrival” of God in the life of the world. If God has “arrived” in our lives, it will have been due to those who carried the good news, whose feet are beautiful on the mountains.