Reflection, 10 Oct 2025
Today’s Gospel reading often gets noticed for Jesus’ words, “Whoever is not with me is against me,” but I want to focus on what follows: “whoever does not gather with me scatters.” A great gift of the Spiritual Exercises is the discernment of spirits, and this beautiful summary does such an amazing job of getting to the heart of what it is like to discern the movement of the good spirit as compared to the movement of the false spirit.
Thinking about scattering and gathering seems timely, but also timeless in light of today’s challenges and the challenges of the past. It helps me think about what is unchanged in the God who is love and who calls us to love. It is remarkable to see how often scattering is at the root of that which drives us from God and from each other, and that God’s response is to keep calling us to gather anyways – knowing our individual and our communal past as humans. That the false or evil spirit is described by St. Ignatius as the enemy of human nature, and that it can be connected with the scattering described today, tells us so much about the God who loves us, and our response – both individual and communal – to that God. If the enemy of human nature scatters, then part of our true nature must be to gather with God in whose image we are created. To love in response to God’s love is an amazing gathering. Why is it so hard to love then?
How quickly our intentions to love can be moved if not discerning in the ways described by today’s Psalm and first reading. The scattering language often brings to my mind the visual from the 1973 Jesus Christ Superstar film, where Judas scatters the nearby sheep while running away from the last supper to betray Jesus. Before he runs off, though, he says something that strikes me, which I suppose is unsurprising given that my top Clifton Strength is Strategic. He says “Every time I look at you, I don’t understand how you let the things you did get so out of hand. You’d have managed better if you’d had a plan” before running off. I can think of times I thought this of God only to find out later there was a plan or purpose, and that it was me who didn’t leave myself open to God’s plan. If my plan had won out, I would not have managed better. It is striking that the gifts we have, the strengths we have, all that we approach life with, can be used by the good spirit to gather or by the evil spirit to scatter.
While reflecting on this reading, I realize it is both as easy and as challenging as recognizing gathering and scattering, and discerning whether we are responding to God in love, or to our own plans or perspectives. We rarely see ourselves as the scatterer but rather the person building something. Reflecting on today’s question has left me to ask myself: when am I really discerning God’s gathering call? When am I really listening, watching, and discerning? Most importantly, when am I allowing myself to be gathered by God and to gather with God, instead of trying to gather God?
Laura Roost
Dr. Roost does research on care ethics in transitional justice, ethnicized/racialized violence, human rights, international law, African philosophy, and civic engagement/service learning in the classroom. Roost is a Resident Assistant Professor and Internship Director in the Department of Political Science and International Relations, and currently serves as the Faculty Associate for Academic Service Learning in the Center for Faculty Excellence. At the American Political Science Association (APSA), Roost has served on the executive council of the Political Science Education section, and on the board for the APSA Human Rights section. Roost earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln with graduate specializations in Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs (Ph.D.), and Women’s & Gender Studies (M.A).