Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Luke 12: 54-59

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Luke 12: 54-59 

(29th Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Mercy: one of the many wonders of God

In this Gospel, Jesus wants to teach us about the blindness of the crowd: they know how to recognize natural phenomenon around them such as changing weather patterns yet they could not fathom the phenomenon of God’s works in the person of Christ before them. God’s action is not found in revenge, as the audience of Jesus time would welcome, to overthrow their Roman occupants; it’s not found in an arduous adherence to the written law, as the Jewish authority would expect from their Jewish population. Instead, God’s business is one of mercy. This is what Jesus teaches us here in this Gospel.

Now mercy is not easy business; it conjures muscle to say sorry or to accept one’s apology. If we are hurt our emotions are involved, and when we allow them to guide our will and not our intellect, the chances of exercising forgiveness becomes more arduous - and I’m convinced this is why Jesus implores us not to judge others unless we be judged. However, Jesus extolls us to repent, to not let our emotions run havoc preventing every chance of reconciliation. It’s important for many reasons, one thing reconciliation does is bring peace and healing into peoples lives, perhaps even the restoration of a broken relationship, two noble reasons to settle any dispute we have with our neighbour.

While repentance can be difficult, Jesus nevertheless encourages us to try giving activity to forgiveness, to exploit the opportunity while time is on our side. His exhortation comes with a grave warning: anyone who does not try and instead holds grudges by continuing to live unrepentant lives, the day of reckoning will devastate them. The measure they have shown will be the measure they will receive; God will not let us get away with the pain and misery we cause others. So, when Jesus tells us that we will have paid the very last penny, he reminds us that God keeps a tab on our lives, and on the last day will issue a non-negotiable infringement and have us pay the debt of sin back, in full. God’s mercy shouldn’t be presumed. God is just and will always do what is right by us, and sometimes that means allowing us to undergo a just punishment.

 The church in our modern world has lost a sense of sin, and forgotten the beauty of and the need for the sacrament of confession. Confession is a wonderful sacrament. Its effects restore our relationship with God. If you read scripture, you will discover that throughout human history it is wrought with sin and God’s efforts to restoring people’s relationship with him. Today, the story remains the same: people continue to abuse their freedom choosing sin instead of good choices, upsetting their relationship with the Lord. When we break relationship with God the only right choice, we can do is settle the matter with him, just as Jesus tells us in this Gospel.

If you haven’t been to confession in a while, consider yourself lucky, for the opportunity to receive God’s forgiveness is still on offer. The offer remains so long we are alive. Take a moment therefore to reflect on your lives, noting down your faults and taking them to confession, before it’s too late and the Lord your judge, hands you over to the bailiff who in turn throws you into that place devoid of the presence of our loving God.

 

 

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Luke 11: 15-26

 

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Luke 11: 15-26 

(27th Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calander, 2023)

Keeping the Devil out: Live the Good Life

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is caught casting out demons and is accused of performing such wonders in the name of the Devil. In their ignorance, Jesus rebukes the people drawing to their attention that no kingdom goes to war with itself - otherwise it heads for ruin. As a result, Jesus casts out demons not in the name of the devil but by his own authority as God.

 

If we follow this passage systematically, we can postulate a hierarchy of power. On the bottom of the scale are the power of human beings. Although we are very capable of many things, from innovation to security, we are pestered by the influence of the devil, whose power is out of our control. Pest is a suitable description for this foe of ours, he never leaves us alone, perpetually seeking a way to offer us distortions of the truth which makes for misery when accepted and pursued as an end itself; the devil is also referred to as the Lord of the Flies, and we are all to familiar with this creature who is often met with the swatter, the ordinary fly itself. The devil is, therefore, an irritant creature like the fly we find buzzing in our homes, only that his temptation, which are his lies, tantamount to dung, is more powerful than the microscopic dirt we find on our bench tops, left by brother insect fly.

 

The devil sits in second place on that hierarchy of power. We can deduce this from today’s Gospel passage as it reads that this creature can wield a force strong enough to influence us and allow him to enter through the gates of our temples, our hearts. The devil can’t be seen, but this does not rule out his own existence. Just as the motives of our hearts has an interior disposition belonging to the unseen and intangible principle of life, the soul, the devil is intangible and unseen too, tempting the soul to motion in the direction of evil, rather than the good. After all, Jesus who is truth itself makes reference to the Devil and does so not in the abstract, but as a matter of reality. In fact, according to today’s Gospel Jesus is seen casting that prick out of people’s lives in whom he has made a home. 

 

Lastly and at the top on that hierarchy of power, we find God there. God, through the power of his finger, and as we read it, with very little effort, puts the devil in his place, for the psychic evil he causes on man.

 

So, as we read it, we are no match for the devil, a very strong power whom Jesus does not underestimate: “So long as a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are undisturbed;” the devil is no match for God, a stronger power, and God can’t be matched by any of his creatures in power and influence, the source in which all powers flow from.

 

This Gospel passage is frightening and enlightening at the same time. Since Jesus is seen at work casting out devils from people, it is worrisome to think that we are vulnerable to an external power such as the devil who can trouble our own existence. However, because God is good, we remain hopeful that he has the strength to relieve us from this force who can plague us.

 

The devil doesn’t have some free travel pass which he can then use to either infest, oppress, obsess, or possess us - and remember these four ways are the four degrees of diabolical possessions in which the devil can trouble our existence. If he gets a stronghold on us in one of these four ways, it’s because we permit him that access. The degree in which he possesses us will be subject to the degree of vice we live by. The darker our motives, the greater access we give Satan to enter and dwell in our hearts, making us feel dispirited, discombobulated, empty and miserable, devoid of happiness and peace.

 

If you don’t want to be pestered by the devil, Jesus reminds us that we should live good lives by filling it with good things. When it’s filled with goodness, the “unclean spirit leaves a clean man” otherwise if your life is empty and sinful you invite the devil, a strong power who has enough force and influence to pest and perhaps possess you. Sin is preceded by temptation and we only sin because we give in to the temptations the devil offers us in our times of vulnerability. The key here is to master temptations so that we don’t allow the devil to gain influence in our lives.

 

Temptation will never leave you even if you live good and holy lives. If you are someone who finds temptation hard to combat, often falling to sin, I think it’s time to offer some practical suggestions for you to live and master the good life. When temptations hits you, make the sign of the cross each time but do it with an act of faith, because it is in faith that Jesus responds to our requests; consider even saying the sign of the cross aloud, invoking the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, because when you say it aloud you remind yourself who you are aligned with: a child of God; at this the devil will jump - but again saying it in faith in Jesus Christ and not from a position of fear will cause the devil to shudder and flee, it’s in response to faith that Jesus will minister to us - this is no magic. Secondly, call on your guardian angel who is given responsibility to watch over you, he will open his wings and descend next to you; he will bless you and the devil will have no choice except to flee.

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Luke 10: 13-16

 

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Luke 10: 13-16 

(26th Friday of Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Upholding the Fatherhood of God

In today’s Gospel Jesus tells us something about himself: like many of us, he knows what it means to be rejected. In fact, in this passage he forewarns of the rejection he will face in those who continue his work as disciples. The word rejection appears three(?) times in his discourse. In another Gospel we learn that Jesus is in fact rejected by his own kinsman for being a man of wonder while of a low social class; obviously his death cross culminates the rejection he faced by his own people. 😢

As disciples of Jesus, rejection is an integral part of the ministry. Part of our work requires to uphold Jesus’s message by word and the way we live. The crux of the message we share with others is that Jesus is truly God, the Son of the Father, he died for us out of love, he wants us to have a change of heart and repent of former ways.

When we are rejected for Jesus’s message, we are not rejected personally though the experience itself is a personal one. Where is Jesus to be spat on when we are yelled at, have the doors shut in our face, or experience physical and emotional abuse for what we stand for? Since we suffer the experience, we associate the rejection we face as a personal one. On top of whatever else we are rejected for, that might be that people find us too ugly, we’re not smart enough, we lack material wealth, nor are gifted in areas that makes for popularity etc., we are rejected also for believing in Jesus. 😯

While we are rejected for Jesus’s sake, Jesus tells us that it’s not us who are rejected: it’s God whom we represent. People reject God when they reject us because God our creator and redeemer and sanctifier has a particular vision for man. Sometimes his vision does not align with our own intentions. When God’s vision doesn’t match with our own ambitions, we say thanks but no thanks to God, and show him the finger. 🖕As his representatives, we are a reminder to people in the flesh that God has another plan for them, a plan bigger than theirs, one that is opposite and questions the nature of their motives. Each time we stand up to the world for the Lord, offering the Good News, we the middle men of God take those blows each time hostility faces us.

Notice also in this Gospel, Jesus criticises Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. The significance of these three places is that they are Judaean towns where Jesus had ministered, preaching the Good News. Here, Jesus is frustrated with the townsmen of these three places and criticises them not exactly for their ungodly ways, but for rejecting him instead. He had performed all kinds of wonders there, such as curing the blind, the deaf and the lame, raised the dead, healed even lepers. He also fed the hungry and people possessed by demons he exercised.

The people, through the works of Jesus, personally witnessed the power of God, and yet they still rejected him, wanting to stone him, even mocked him. What on earth is wrong with them?  No doubt this is a question asked by Jesus too, hence the frustration.

God who is all powerful exercise his power for the good of others. This is seen in Jesus’s own ministry. God who exercises this power through Jesus tells us that he is a caring and loving God. His care and love isn’t lacking personality either: he loves us with a father’s love.

While we are not townsmen of Capernaum, nor of Chorazin, nor Bethsaida, we are capable of rejecting the fatherhood of God too. Indeed, we can reject God by the way we live; we might intoxicate ourselves in alcohol, take drugs such as cannabis which impedes us from thinking rationally, gossip, fornicate or even avariciously accur wealth at the expense of others; however, we can reject God by saying to hell with the Father’s love for me, I’ll do what I want.

This is the essence of today’s Gospel. God’s fatherhood is questioned and sidelined by the people. As Christians, it’s our first duty to recognise that God is more than some intangible force that puts into motion the material world, and distance himself from us watching all that takes place from afar. Instead, he is a God who not only causes things to exists but who is also close to us and is loveable. 🥰 God should be loved not because he gives us gifts but for his own sake, the fact he loves us and desires our flourishment and as a result always gives recklessly.

There are fringes in society that deny the reality of God’s fatherhood. Sceptics have their doubts: if he is a God who loves us, why all the evil in the world? Wouldn’t a loving Father figure God do something about the injustices in the world? On the surface of it all it may look as though God is indifferent to the evil that exists however if we look deeply, we find God is working to bring about peace in the world: he uses us as his hands, to do all he can, to limit the hurt we witness in the world today. Then there are our Muslim friends who militantly deny Jesus’s divinity and Sonship in the Father. Since they deny the Sonship of Jesus, they deny also the Father who sent him too.

As disciples our duty is to witness to the Sonship of Jesus in the Father. As history has shown, this will come at a cost and if we’re not too familiar with history, Jesus warns of rejection for us who love him. On that note, why don’t we spend some time in prayer examining our lives and reflect on our relationship with God the Father? If we’ve prioritised and idolised material goods, and experiences as our first love instead of God, now is the time to ask for the grace to repent and change our ways and dedicate our entire lives to his cause which is to make us as adopted sons and daughters of the kingdom.