Growing in True Faith: Live by the Christ-Criterion

THE WORD IN LENT: Monday, 2nd week in Lent

March 01, 2021: Daniel 9: 4b-10; Luke 6: 36-38

As pastors many have this experience, as once a priest shared: “as it has happened many a times, I stepped out of the Sacristy after the Sunday Eucharist, and a person approached me and said: ‘Fr., thanks for the homily today! It was really beautiful, but I am afraid too difficult to practice!’ And I smiled at her reassuringly and said, ‘If I were to think of living my life anyway, with compromises, it would be much easier! But living a true and convinced Christian life is any day, difficult.’ She smiled, and bowed for a blessing!”

Is that not a very common experience, a very spontaneous thinking that many of us might have? That we can go easy on ourselves, and not demand too much from ourselves, to go with the flow and live in conformity to the society we find ourselves in? But conforming to the world or conforming to Christ…which is our real call?

"To live by the law you gave us", prays prophet Daniel today in the first reading! And Jesus gives us a criterion, to follow the law. Let what you expect from others for yourself be the criterion for your dealings with others! But the difficult part follows: Jesus says, let what you expect be the criterion but not what you actually get! You may or may not get what you expect, but you have an obligation to give the others what you expect from them! What you get in return - does that actually matter?

An apt day to pray with St. Francis of Assisi, 'Lord, grant that I may seek to understand than to be understood; to love than to be loved; to forgive than to be forgiven'. To give, give and to give, that is the Christ-Criterion!

Let us live by the Christ-criterion - that shall be the last renewal required of us!