Wednesday, May 23, 2018
TODAY'S REFLECTION - WEDNESDAY, 7TH WEEK - ORDINARY TIME
St.John Baptist De Rossi, Confessor
James 4:13-17/Psalm 48:2-3,6-11/ Mark 9:38-40
THY WILL BE DONE
Beloved, St. James, in our today's first reading, reminds us to always say, "If the Lord wills it", or "God willing", or "if God permits", or "by the grace of God". During Jesus' agony in the garden, he prayed: not my will, but yours be done. In the Lord's Prayer/Our Father, we say, 'Thy will be done." If Jesus came to do the will of God the Father, what about us, whose will are we doing? We should not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth ( Proverbs 27:1). Let us also remember the story of the Rich Fool ( Luke 12:16-21). No one knows tomorrow. No man can arrogantly claim he has power to decide what will happen in the future. False prophets should be mindful of predicting the future. We cannot change God's plans. We should also be mindful of procrastination. We should not keep postponing things as if we are for ourselves. Whatever we have to do now, we should do, since we don't know what may happen in the future.
Friends, in our today's Gospel reading, somebody who was not in the company of the apostles, used the name of Jesus to cast out demons and the apostles tried to stop him, and Jesus told them not to stop him. This means, we should not stop people from using the name of Jesus to do good. There are some of us who want to use our own name or power to work miracles. Some of us also try to do things under the cover of using Jesus' name. Jesus came to save all humanity. No individual or group of individuals should try to possess Jesus as belonging to them alone. Before we do or say anything, we should ask ourselves the following questions:
Is it motivated by true love? Is it for the general good?
Is it according to Scripture and Tradition?
We should be mindful of what we encourage/discourage people to do and say.
Let us pray that God's will may be done in our lives. We also pray to encourage people to do and say the objectively good things, according to the will of God. BE BLESSED.
Fr. Gaa (0206854323/0240308878)