October 18, 2020: Resisting empire with Maureen O'Connell

Preaching for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Maureen O'Connell offers a reflection on resisting the thinking, habits, and solutions of empire:  "We aren’t chosen by the authority figures of empires, no matter what religious or political guises they moralize with or campaign in or what certainties they claim to offer or platitudes they attempt to ply us with. We are chosen by God. And the God who chooses us has a dream for us—the individual us and the collective us—that surpasses the imagination of empire."   Maureen H. O’Connell is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion and Theology at LaSalle University. She authored Compassion: Loving Our Neighbor in an Age of Globalization (Orbis Books, 2009) and If These Walls Could Talk: Community Muralism and the Beauty of Justice (The Liturgical Press, 2012). She is a member of POWER (Philadelphians Organizing to Witness, Empower, and Rebuild), an interfaith coalition of more than 50 congregations committed to making Philadelphia the city of “just love” through faith-based community organizing.    Visit www.catholicwomenpreach.org/preaching/10182020 to learn more about Maureen, to read her preaching text, and for more preaching from Catholic women.