WORD 2day - Saturday, 14th week in Ordinary time
July 15, 2023: Genesis 49:29-33,50:15-26; Matthew 10:24-33
The challenge is to belong to God, come what may. It is not an easy task considering the prevailing atmosphere today. I know of so many youngsters who are so inspiring by the absolute choice that they have made for God and the will of God. People who have had great ambitions and plans, but have just thrown them into the air for the sake of a vision that God inspired. Persons who have had prospects so promising, but have ignored those just because they felt they have been called for a specific mission, a mission in the footsteps of the Master-saviour. Daring individuals who have made choices for which they are being derided, called names and have suffered worst experiences of want and willful deprivation. A challenge!
When this challenge is taken up, one could find oneself on a tossing sea or a troubled sky, but nothing would disturb the person for he or she has found a ground so firm, a base so strong, a root so deep - the Lord who calls, commissions and walks one through. At the end of all the tribulations, pervades a serenity, a sense of accomplishment, the same sense with which Jesus gasped on the cross, "It is accomplished." That is the tone in which Jacob aka Israel speaks today of his end and what should come after.
The Lord does not leave us merely with the challenge, he attaches an assurance! The assurance of God's caring presence with us! Pope Francis in the encyclical Lumen Fidei calls this 'the accompanying presence of God' (LF 57). An assurance that arises from the fact that God loves us, that God values us, that God cares for us, and above all, that God counts on us!