21st Sunday of the Ordinary Time
Luke 13:22-30
August 25, 2013
To become a follower of Christ is
a choice and as Jesus says, it is a difficult one. Our faith tells us that
heaven is real, but faith alone is not enough to carry us up there. To profess
the faith and to know the content of our faith are surely important, but it is
incomplete. We need to work our faith out and make it a reality. Otherwise, our
faith becomes mere rhetorical exercise. In the frank words of St. James, “faith
without works is dead (Jam 2:17).” Faith is God’s grace yet, it is up to our
freedom to make this God’s gift fruitful.
It is a radical choice to live up
our faith daily. We can be baptized as Catholics or Christians, yet we never go
to the Church. We profess our belief in only one God, but we enjoy reading horoscopes,
consulting fortunetellers and use religious items as mere protective amulets. We
can easily shout, “God is good all the time,” but we have a lot of complains in
our lives. We are often instructed by Jesus Himself to love our enemies, yet we
maintain hatred, remain vengeance-oriented and take pleasure when our enemies
absorb misfortunes.
We like being called a follower of
Christ, but we do not actually follow His footsteps. We want to be Christian,
yet we adopt our own suitable styles instead of Christ’s examples. This is a
serious problem and indeed we might flung heaven. If we try to paraphrase
today’s Gospel, it will sound like this: We knock the gate of heaven and shout
“Lord, I am your follower”, but the Lord says, “I do not know you because you
never actually follow me.”
Prayer:
Lord, give us determination and commitment to live
our faith daily, to act what we profess and to do what we believe. Amen
Br. Valentinus Bayuhadi Ruseno, OP
No comments:
Post a Comment