True Loss and Real Gain

Thursday, 31st week in Ordinary time

November 8, 2018: Philippians 3: 3-8a; Luke 15: 1-10

The World today judges everything against categories like gain or loss or profit or returns! Which is the true loss and what would be real gain - the Apostle today clarifies it in no uncertain terms. I consider everything as a loss or as rubbish, when it comes to knowing Christ, gaining favour with the Lord, growing in relationship with the Lord. 

Past glories, handed down traditions, legalistic requirements, ritual uprightness...these will not take you that far, however good and right and just they are. All that is expected of us is to get nearer and nearer, closer and closer,  more and more in personal relationship with God. God keeps looking out for us as presented in the parables in the Gospel- the shepherd and the woman! And so evidently the initial lines of the Gospel today communicates it: the tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to Jesus and the pharisees were complaining! What really matters is not circumcision or not...but the relationship one has with the person of Christ. 

Entering into a personal rapport with the Lord means being moulded into the Lord's ways. The question fundamentally is about one's choices and priorities. The Gospel clarifies the choices and priorities of the Lord...for the Lord, God's children matter the most! Whether one has been into sin all one's life (like the sheep that stray), or one considers oneself worth nothing (just a single dime); for the Lord, that one person is worth the whole world, is worth giving up everything, even God's only son!

True loss is the loss of relationship with the Lord and Real gain is gaining life in the Lord. Whether we live or die, we do it for Christ.