WORD 2day: Wednesday, 33rd week in Ordinary time
November 20, 2019: 2 Maccabees 7: 1,20-31; Luke 19:11-28
The end time disaster narration continues in the first reading, while the recommendation given today is: take yourself seriously! Look at your life, look at what you are, look artwhat you have, look at what you are given, look at the tasks entrusted to you and take them seriously! The urge to be faithful to God is never a question of maintaining the status quo.
As spiritual masters always warn us, not to progress in spiritual life is to regress! Faithfulness to God is not lived or manifested in remaining where we are (maintaining status quo) or merely in moments of legal fulfillment of rules and routine practices of piety. It takes fundamental radical choices at crucial moments to tell not just the Lord but the world too, that I belong to the Lord, to the One who has created me, the One who has called me and commissioned me.
Like the young lad, who as his mother and 6 other brothers, in the first reading chooses God over everything that the king promises and over his very life, our choices need to speak for themselves; not just the choices of life and death, but the choices of what we want to do with what we are - the talents, the gifts that the Lord has given us, the choices of what we want to do with every moment of life that God has gifted us with.
We can choose to enrich them and enhance them, or just bury them and be inactive! We could easily fall into the category of 'you-wicked-servant', if we are not mindful! The choice today, is mine - would I be ready to take myself seriously and keep growing!