Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Nothing can separate!

WORD 2day: Thursday, 30th week in Ordinary time

October 31, 2019: Romans 8: 31-39; Luke 13:31-35

Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ; no one can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus - the most energising words of St. Paul. Can things be clearer than this... just read those lines in the first reading once more - categorical, clear, convinced, charismatic and courageous! 

St. Paul, the apostles and the first Christians learnt this from Jesus himself. If God is for me, who can be against me - that was the confidence of faith that defined the courageous choices that Jesus made. Neither Herod, nor Pilate, nor the high priests or the chief priests, nor the impending death, nor the rejection of the crowd - nothing mattered to him, because he knew that the One who sent him, loved him! 

Look at the situation today: the anti-religious voices becoming louder, the anti-Christian forces becoming stronger, the anti-Church movements becoming fiercer by the day! Should that frighten us? What about so many millions who have left the Christian faith for either non-religious adherence or other diabolic choices, in the few decades past? Should that destabilise us? No. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

However, there is one... there is one who can separate me from God's love - that is a warning for me today! There is only one who can separate me from God's love - Myself. There is only one thing that can separate me from the love of Christ - My ego! If I choose not to belong to God, if I choose to reject God's love, I separate myself from God. 

How much God wishes to gather me into God's arms, but I rebel!!!