The WORD in ADVENT - Living the Reign here and now #14

Look, Listen and Renounce Arrogance

Second Saturday in Advent: December 15, 2018

Sirach 48: 1-4,9-11 ; Matthew 17: 9a, 10-13

Living the Reign here and now requires that we look, listen and renounce our arrogance so that the Lord can have his way! One of the sayings tough but totally true is: you can wake up someone who is asleep, not the one who pretends to be sleeping. The question of Elijah comes up and Jesus responds more than a bit in those terms. 

Jesus lays bare the arrogance that the Jews had, which was instrumental in doing away with such numerous prophets. Jesus knew all the while what awaits him with such stiff necked people. Before we go ahead to blame those people, let us direct the question to ourselves: how prepared are we to receive the revelation from God, even from those quarters that we may not totally like! 

At times our likes and dislikes determine what we would consider to be true or not! Can truth me so relative, that when someone whom I like tells me I believe it and when someone whom I don't like says it, I scorn! As the ancient Indian wisdom would say: Let truth come from all directions! We should be able to look at the reality around and listen to the messages that abound. For that we need to necessarily shed our arrogance!

In our arrogance, we would miss the Lord passing by, we would miss the words that can give us new life, we would remain stunted and dwarfed in our spiritual life. Renounce arrogance to receive the Lord, because the Lords stands at the door knocking... if we have to listen, we need to wake up and look. In doing so, we shall begin to live the Reign here and now.