RevivaLent 2018 - #17

Revive your conviction not to kill

Friday, 2nd week in Lent: 2nd, March, 2018

Gen 7: 3-4, 12-13, 17-28; Mt 21: 33-43, 45-47

There is a common phrase in today's readings: come let us kill him! 

At times we target a helpless individual just because the person is different from us or thinks different from us. Inspite of knowing well that the person is right and just, we tend to gang up against the person merely because he or she is an hindrance to our way of thinking or our way of being. 

Our words,  or judgements,  the remarks we pass,  the comments we circulate can be really killing the person, worse even than sentencing the person to death. Character assassinations, insensitive treatment of persons,  selfish manipulation of individuals and exploitations of all types are some ways we do away with persons around us. 

The moment a person has an opinion different from mine, the moment a person does not do what I want, the moment a person finds that my way of thinking may not be the ideal and expresses it so, I begin to think that the person is against me! Once I decide that he or she is against me, I am out to destroy that person - in whichever way I can: intellectually, morally, psychologically, socially... only thing that is left is destroying physically, which happens by itself! Is this not killing?

Even the best of preachers, specially the television and media preachers of today, fall prey to this murderous tendency - trying to destroy the other with facts and fallacies, allegations and imaginations. Forget the politicians and businessmen, the so-called "religious" people are the worst of this kind, killing each other in words and in deeds! 

The call to each of us today is: to restrain ourselves from killing, from giving into anger, from losing our sense of serenity, from failing to recollect, from becoming deaf to the voice of God which speaks love and love alone! 

Let us revive our conviction not to kill.