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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Thursday of the Thirtieth Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Lk 13:31-35): Some Pharisees came to Jesus and said, “Go away, leave this area because Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and I perform healings today and tomorrow,..

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were unwilling! ..."

Politics at the service of man

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

Today, Jesus Christ blames the "king" from whom the promotion of peace linked to justice should be expected. Politics is the sphere of reason: not a purely technical, calculating reason, but a "moral" reasoning, since the end of the State and thus, the ultimate purpose of all politics is, by its very nature, moral (peace, justice…). Restoration of the "moral reason" (what is reasonably good for man) requires debugging the "non-reasonable".

After the fall of the grand Ideologies, it becomes urgent to demystify those values which have been distorted by oversimplifying them in a way that can be described as mythical: progress, science, freedom... The "majority" also! None of this constitutes, in itself, an ultimate criterion regarding the goodness of man. There are values that not even majorities can dispute. But, which ones? A first response is offered to us by the "Decalogue", considering it not to be the private property of Christians or Jews.

—The "Decalogue" is an exalted expression of moral reason that, as such, is also found in the wisdom of the other great cultures. Faith does not substitute reason, but it may help to highlight essential values.