The first reading from Amos and the Gospel passage from St. Mark have an important message for us, the Christian community today. In Amos we are presented with the prophet being lambasted by a crowd and told that he is never to speak in the way he has been doing. Poor Amos, we may think. However, he does not need our pity; he is a man who utterly believes that what he says and does is just what he was told to say and do by the Lord. In the Gospel we witness how the disciples are given the power to anoint sick people and drive out demons from those who find themselves possessed. This power has come from Jesus and has been gifted to the apostles. These are people who can now minister as they have seen the Lord minister.
It can often seem today that there is a rising intolerance towards Christianity and its message. In our society we are unlikely to meet the kind of persecution that is faced by people of faith in some other countries of the world. We are people who have been given a call, a vocation by the Lord. We know our identity as sons and daughters of God. We have been chosen and made holy bur our God. The more we recognize these truths, the more we should not care what the “crowd” thinks about us. Being Christians today, as it always has been, is about being people of love, people of truth, people of justice, people of integrity, people of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Let us never give up living the life that we have been called to live.