Is good, good enough?

WORD 2day: Wednesday, 21st week in Ordinary time

August 25, 2021: 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13; Matthew 23: 27-32

When we say, 'he is good' or 'she is good'... how certain are we about the fact? It is our overall judgement about persons, looking at what we see, what we hear, what we observe... but no one can deny that there is more to reality than what we can apparently see or hear! How many times we trust someone as being good, and finally come to realise it was not actually true! Or how many other instances where we judged someone rashly from the looks, but ended up being humbled by their goodness and gentleness! So can we ever say someone is good?

Goodness - can we ever attribute it to anyone! Or can any of us really claim to be good absolutely? This is the question that the Word raises within us today. How good are you? Is your goodness, good enough? The Word questions, not whether we are good or whether we do good - but whether our goodness is really good? 

At times we may appear or manifest ourselves to be good, to win favours, or establish a name or having hidden agenda to be achieved. At times we may strive to be good, just to make up for something that we have done wrong, which we alone would know - as a kind of atonement. At times we may do good, which may be good only in our judgement and there would be no one who really benefit out of it. Hence, the impeccable touchstone to goodness is God and God alone.

God who knows us through and through, who knows not only our speech and our acts but even our thoughts and our intentions, certainly knows how good we are! Hence the challenge we have is not to just be good, but to be good in the eyes of the Lord - that is intrinsic goodness - to be attentive to the Word of the Lord, accept it, live by it and be truly good, intrinsically good, after the heart of the Lord!