WORD 2day: Monday, 31st week in Ordinary time
November 4, 2019: Romans 11: 29-36; Luke14: 12-14
Calculations of gain and loss, returns and rewards make an action limited to these considerations. Jesus, not only taught us a consideration different from these, but lived it himself and challenges us to live by it.
The consideration Jesus lived by was -'what God wants of me here and now'! Adopting that as my decisive criterion in life, requires of me two important attitudes:
The first reading speaks of the first of the two attitudes - it is, an immeasurable awe and absolute entrustment to the Wisdom of God. Doing the will of God is possible only when there is an invincible conviction that God's will is always good and favorable to my well being. Looking at God as a punishing God or a vindictive task master will never enable to lovingly surrender to God's will.
The second attitude - placing others, especially the weak, the poor, the least and the last, the needy as a crucial focus of my perspective on life, and not looking at my own selfish and egoistic ends. How many times even the little good that I do for the needy, is so filled with my selfish motives!
Only when these two become my attitudes, I can worthily say as St. Paul says in the reading today: 'From God and through God and to God are all things. To God be glory for ever. Amen.'