Thursday, July 15, 2010

SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR

MONDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt.12:38-42). The plea of the Pharisees is one that has come down through the ages. It elicits the same answer: don’t you see. We are surrounded with the working of God but put our own conditions on how He is going to work a sign. It seems that we are afraid to stand in wonder at His works. To really wonder at something is to stand in awe, to be amazed, to go into a dimension which we never thought existed. This takes courage because we are not in control. Perhaps the real danger is that we want to control God, to tell Him how to do His job.

TUESDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt.12:46-50) The words sound so harsh, almost rejecting. We have to look for another explanation beyond the obvious. It is the Lord giving the possibility of becoming His mother to each and every person who believes in Him. This of course is not in the physical sense, but in a spiritual sense. We can give birth to the Lord in the hearts of people by preaching about Him. More powerfully we can do that by living His message. So many people have come to the faith because of the good example of others. Only God can make God come alive in the hearts of people but people can open the doorand it is in this sense that we become mothers of the Lord.

WEDNESDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt.13:1-9) The power of the word of God is to change the hearts of people. The message of today’s Gospel is not so much about the “good guys” and the “bad guys”, the hearers and the non-hearers as it is about the living Word of God. The good soil cannot be good soil unless the Word has made it so. We are never sure when the power of the word is going to do something great; therefore it must be preached through word and example and secondly we must never give up on people.

THURSDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt. 13:10-17) To really listen is one of the most difficult things we have to do. We listen to what we want to hear; we color with our own needs, wants and aspirations those things which we do hear. To really listen demands a response. So often, we respond to not what was really said, but to what we think was said. We listen to the conversations going on within us. To listen means to let the world into our lives. To listen means to have the courage to change. To listen implies that we are willing to open ourselves up to something new. To listen means we can share the joys and pains of other people.

FRIDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt. 13:18-23) Listening is so important and so difficult that the Lord spends a lot of time speaking about it. It seems that His teaching on listening may be set down in a few words. We have the tendency to stay with the material. All the “bad soils” have that in common. They were not able to, not willing to, rise above the for material satisfaction in one way or another. The conflict between the Spirit and the flesh is always present. The Word of God turns the flesh into spirit.

SATURDAY OF THE SIXTEENTH WEEK OF THE YEAR (Matt.13:24-30) We are works in progress. Almost a cliché, but still something for us to remember. The field of our hearts into which the gift of the kingdom has been sown is fragile. We hold the gift “in an earthen vessel.” We get the gift of the kingdom mixed up with the “weeds” of the world around us. Values which are not of the kingdom come into our hearts. Priorities which are not the Good News of Jesus but rather our own “good news” become operative within us. We are torn between the two worlds. We have the hope that someday the victory of the Lord within us will be complete and the field will have only the wheat of the Kingdom.

No comments:

Post a Comment