WORD 2day: Thursday, 33rd week in Ordinary time
November 21, 2019: 1 Maccabees 2:15-29; Luke 19: 41-44
Though there is a choice of celebrating the presentation of our Blessed Mother - that is the occasion of Joachim and Anne presenting the child Mary in the temple - we shall continue with the week day readings, because they have an important message and prepare us towards the great feast we look forward to at the end of this week!
Who is your king? – yes, that is the crucial question that will be asked these days of the week running up to the Solemnity of Christ the King. The parable we heard yesterday of the return of the king who demands an account, the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus speaks of today in the Gospel and the call of Mattathias to gather in his leadership against the persecuting forces… all these present a crisis situation; a situation demanding a definitive choice. The scheme with which the week began continues... the first reading presents the crisis and the Gospel indicates our response!
Sometimes external pressures like the work ambient, the political milieu, the personal addictions or the overpowering temptations can present a crisis situation to us… a situation that actually offers us an opportunity to make a radical choice for God or against God! Even a simple affair like the choice of words we use, or an ordinary decision we make on a daily basis, can determine the radical belonging to or rejection of God in our lives! May our everyday choices be such that the Lord never need to weep over us, as he did over Jerusalem!
Hence, an all important question for me to answer: who is my king, the king after whom I would be able to go, just as the people do in the first reading today: leaving behind everything, just everything! That requires that i firmly, in my daily life, identify my kind!
Who is your king? – yes, that is the crucial question that will be asked these days of the week running up to the Solemnity of Christ the King. The parable we heard yesterday of the return of the king who demands an account, the siege of Jerusalem that Jesus speaks of today in the Gospel and the call of Mattathias to gather in his leadership against the persecuting forces… all these present a crisis situation; a situation demanding a definitive choice. The scheme with which the week began continues... the first reading presents the crisis and the Gospel indicates our response!
Sometimes external pressures like the work ambient, the political milieu, the personal addictions or the overpowering temptations can present a crisis situation to us… a situation that actually offers us an opportunity to make a radical choice for God or against God! Even a simple affair like the choice of words we use, or an ordinary decision we make on a daily basis, can determine the radical belonging to or rejection of God in our lives! May our everyday choices be such that the Lord never need to weep over us, as he did over Jerusalem!
Hence, an all important question for me to answer: who is my king, the king after whom I would be able to go, just as the people do in the first reading today: leaving behind everything, just everything! That requires that i firmly, in my daily life, identify my kind!