During ordinary time we get exposed to lessons in discipleship. The lesson this week includes a warning against spiritual jealousy.

My friend Rita recently came back from yoga class quite disturbed. Rita has an office job, and she finds the yoga stretches to be very useful in preventing back-related stress. But the yoga teacher from time to time slips a little “spirituality” into what my friend regards as an exercise class.

John spoke up, “Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn’t in our group.”

Our track record as a church is, alas, not much better than the rest of society. We have our own sad history of excluding people from our pews, our sacraments, our schools, only because of their accents or the color of their skin. How we could have possibly justified such behavior remains a mystery.

Big John the Muffler Man was a legend among Midwestern salesmen. During the ’50s and ’60s, he traveled the U.S. highways calling on automotive parts stores in an eight-state area.

Blanche and her friends had been in charge of the Mothers’ Club at their parish for years. They’d hosted lots of events, raised a lot of money for the religious education program, and had a lot of fun.

With love for God’s commandments and remorse for our sins, we turn to the Lord for forgiveness.

The cry of the oppressed is God’s voice. . . . The cry of the voiceless and the hopeless is God’s voice. . . . The protest of the poor is God’s voice. . . . And the voice of the countries who are victims of these injustices is God’s voice.