This week, I want to continue looking at some of the reflections from the “Stations of the Cross for Healing” that I talked about last week. I will be praying these Stations at the Noon Stations of the Cross at St. Patrick. You are welcome to join us & pray these reflections upon the Stations in their entirety.

  In this week’s reflection on the 8th Station, Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem, David Knight reflects that “Onlookers just see what happens. Leaders ask, ”Why?” and “What can I do about it?” Certainly there are many issues, challenges, & imperfections in ourselves, those around us, our parish, our city, our state, our country, our world. The temptation can be to make those imperfections, those weaknesses, those things that need to be changed nothing more than the subjects of our gossip & complaining. It can be easy to sit around & talk about “what isn’t right.” It can be tempting to sit around & complain about what we see that needs to be changed.

 That’s the easy part, perhaps the harder part is to get up & do something about it. Yes, we can’t necessarily change every single problem that’s out there. Yes, we don’t always have the power to affect everything that “is wrong.” But, while we might not have the ability to make every change, that doesn’t mean that we can’t make some change, even if that change is within ourselves. When we see an issue, when we’re confronted with a challenge, rather than only gossiping & complaining about it, perhaps a good question that we can ask ourselves is, “What action can I do to help bring about change?” But when we ask that, we also need to be prepared, because while we might want the answer to be to get someone else to change, perhaps the real answer is a change within ourselves. If we want to see change happen, perhaps the first question we need to ask is, “Where does change need to happen in me?”