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Master·evangeli.net

Today's Gospel + short theological explanation

Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
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Gospel text (Mt 24:42-51): Jesus said to his disciples: “Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come... Who, then, is the faithful and prudent servant, whom the master has put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so. Amen, I say to you, he will put him in charge of all his property. But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

Man: what is he good for?

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

Today, begins Jesus Christ’s "Eschatological Discourse" which proposes the "to be or not to be" of our lives: man should not only question himself about what he wants, but rather what is he good for and to what can he contribute. Then he would realize that self-fulfillment does not reside in comfort, in loitering, but in accepting challenges. Ignoring this reality leads to "the weeping and gnashing of teeth". Hence the warning: Watch out!

We cannot become men without controlling the self, without abnegation, without the effort to patiently suffer the tension of what we should be. Precisely, "the weeping and gnashing of teeth" represents the risk of failure of the human being. In a world far away from God and, therefore, from love, we feel awfully cold, to the point of producing the gnashing of teeth.

—O Lord, your ways —of love— are not comfortable. But I have not been created for comfort, but for big and good things, for others, for You.

November 10th
Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time (B)

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November 9th
Feast of the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome

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