What is your choice: the exile or the Reign?

WORD 2day: Thursday, 12th week in Ordinary time

June 25, 2020: 2 Kings 24: 8-17; Matthew 7: 21-29

The Word today has the classical challenge: what do you choose? Our life of faith and our daily life meet each other on that hot seat called, Choice! Rise or ruin, happiness or doom, fullness or nothingness - the choice is mine! I cannot escape from it. We have seen in the book of Deuteronomy this basic philosophy of life that the people of God were taught: behold I place before you today, life and death! (see Deuteronomy 30:15) Today we have an illustration of the same lifestyle in the reading taken together.

The first reading says, Jehoiachin did what was not desirable in the eyes of God and his house crumbled - his mother, his servants and all, his people were destroyed, the entire salvation plan that God was taking forward in and through the so called chosen people of God, went to ruin! Chosenness is not guaranteed by anything other than reponding to that choseness by our daily personal choices.

The Gospel affirms that the one who hears the Word of the Lord, and does the will of God the Father and Mother, has already found favour in the eyes of the Lord, and his house is built on a rock; no rain, no thunder, no floods, no disease, no fear of death, no suffering or sickness can ruin it! In all these the chosen one will live strong, clear, hopeful and blessed. 

Taking the readings together we can understand what the Word tells us today: the choice is yours - the exile or the Reign. If you choose your own will, your own ego, your own ways and your own logic of profit, exploitation and manipulation... you are already walking towards your exile. You may think you are rising up, your are rushing towards prosperity or proving yourself to the world; you will all of a sudden realise, you have entered into an exile which is a million times worse than all the quarantines that we keep speaking of these days.

Instead, if your receive the Word of God, respect the will of God and follow the promptings of the Spirit, it would seem you are walking through fire, drowning in suffering, slipping into misery and trapped in troubles - but you are actually and already treading into the Reign, growing into the Reign, entering into the Reign of God, the fulfillment of the entire life and of the world. 

Let us pay attention today: what is our choice - the exile or the Reign?

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