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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Tuesday of the Twenty-eighth Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Lk 11:37-41): After Jesus had spoken... the Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? ..."

"Si Deus daretur" (save reason by opening it up to faith)

EDITORIAL TEAM evangeli.net (based on texts by Benedict XVI) (Città del Vaticano, Vatican)

Today —by listening to Jesus scolding the Pharisees— we can see how the idea of God may be instrumentalized and become "lethal": this is the danger run by religion. But a reason that is completely split from God and wants to confine Him to the scope of the purely subjective, also loses its bearings and leads to destructive forces.

In the Enlightenment people sought justification for morality that would be valid "etsi Deus non daretur" (as if God did not exist). Today we must invite our agnostic friends to be receptive to a morality "si Deus daretur". Without this absolute point of reference (God), human work is lost in uncertainty. Christians are not certainly called to put limits to reason, but rather to refuse that it is just reduced to the scope of doing.

—O Lord, I will struggle to affirm the capacity of our reason to perceive what is good and He WHO is Good. Only thus we shall fight the actual battle in favor of man and against inhumanity.