Contemplating today's Gospel
Today's Gospel + homily (in 300 words)
Then the king, and the queen seated beside him, asked me how long my journey would take and when I would return. I set a date that was acceptable to him, and the king agreed that I might go. I asked the king further: «If it please the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of West-of-Euphrates, that they may afford me safe-conduct until I arrive in Judah; also a letter for Asaph, the keeper of the royal park, that he may give me wood for timbering the gates of the temple-citadel and for the city wall and the house that I shall occupy». The king granted my requests, for the favoring hand of my God was upon me.
Though there our captors asked of us the lyrics of our songs, and our despoilers urged us to be joyous: «Sing for us the songs of Zion!».
How could we sing a song of the Lord in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten!
May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, if I place not Jerusalem ahead of my joy.
“Follow me”
Fr. Lluc TORCAL Monk of Santa Maria de Poblet (Santa Maria de Poblet, Tarragona, Spain)Today, the Gospel invites us to reflect on a central point of our faith with great clarity and no less insistence: the radical following of Jesus. "I will follow you wherever you go" (Lk 9:57). With what simplicity of expression can one propose something capable of completely changing a person's life! "Follow me" (Lk 9:59). Words of the Lord that admit no excuses, delays, conditions, or betrayals...
Christian life is this radical following of Jesus. Radical, not only because its entire duration desires to be under the guidance of the Gospel (because it encompasses, therefore, the entire duration of our lives), but—above all—because all its aspects—from the most extraordinary to the most ordinary—desire to be and must be a manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ that animates us. Indeed, from Baptism, ours is no longer the life of just any ordinary person: we carry the life of Christ within us! Through the Holy Spirit poured into our hearts, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us. This is the Christian life, because it is a life filled with Christ, because Christ flows from its deepest roots: this is the life we are called to live.
When the Lord came into the world, although "every human race had its place, He did not have it: He found no place among men (...), except in a manger, among livestock and animals, and among the simplest and most innocent people. This is why He says: 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’" (Saint Jerome). The Lord will find a place among us if, like John the Baptist, we allow Him to increase and ourselves to decrease, that is, if we allow Him who already lives in us to grow, being pliable and docile to His Spirit, the source of all humility and innocence.
Thoughts on Today's Gospel
“The consent to grace depends much more on grace than on the will, while the resistance to grace depends upon the will only. So sweet is God's hand.” (Saint Francis de Sales)
“God imparts unto us the motion of its power without hindering that of our will by adjusting his power to his sweetness and the freedom of our will.” (Benedict XVI)
“Man's vocation to eternal life does not suppress, but actually reinforces, his duty to put into action in this world the energies and means received from the Creator to serve justice and peace.” (Catechism Of The Catholic Church, Nº 2820)
