WORD 2day: Friday, 12th week in Ordinary time
June 26, 2020: 2 Kings 25: 1-12; Matthew 8: 1-4
The first reading today is an anticlimax... everything seems finished, everything seems done and dusted, all that has been seems useless at a point in life. This is what we call the breaking point. Each one reaches that in life, at some moment or the other. How one deals with it, depends much on what one has done the rest of the time in life - that is, how one has prepared onself for varied experiences of this kind, in life.
Talk of depression, stress and anxiety disorders are more these days - not because the situation all around has gotten worse than what it has always been. It is because we have become less prepared for all that life can offer us in time. We are prepared for good times and for jubilations, but for trying moments and tribulations? Are we not seeing that from the way people panic when crises of the sort we are facing today world over, comes our way?
When the man asks Jesus to cure him, if he wishes to, Jesus says, "of course, I wish to!" That is what the Lord tells us today: of course, I wish to be with you, strengthen you and help you out at times of trials and difficulties - but what can I do, you have accustomed yourself to doing things by yourself, to taking things under your own control, deciding things on your own and working on things on merely your own terms! I don't seem to have a place in your life!
Of course, the Lord wants to, but are we willing to go into the presence of the Lord and surrender ourselves, and say, "if you wish to...do what you wish with me!"