Upsetting the Human
Criteria of Judgment
Twenty-Second Week of Year II
Monday, August 29, 2016
(Begin
readings from Luke’s Gospel).
The Responsorial (Psalm 119) is a response of love to
love: “Lord, I love your commands.”
In 1Corinthians 2:1-5 Paul’s
humility is the foundation for our trust in his preaching:
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come
proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom... but with a
demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on
human wisdom but on the power of God.
Absolute truth and goodness are found only in God. When someone
asked Jesus, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus was
hinting at his own divinity when he answered, “Why do you call me good? No one
is good but God alone.” Later he was more explicit: “I am the Way, and the
Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”[1] Our faith is not founded
on anything human, but on the absolute Truth and Goodness of Jesus as God
himself.
For you alone are the Holy One,
You alone are the Lord,
You alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ
Because of this we accept God’s teaching as a precious gift and
all his commands as priceless benefits entrusted to us, to use and manage as
“stewards of his kingship” for our good and the good of others. The attitude
and appreciation we foster in ourselves and encourage in others is: “Lord, I love your commands.”
But in Luke 4:16-30 The people of Nazareth, Jesus’ home town, did not
love the great news he gave them or even accept it as good news. When he read
to them the promise of “good news to the
poor… liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to
prisoners…” and added: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your
hearing,” they were ready to kill him. Why?
Two reasons. First: resistance to change; specifically, to the
idea that the “hometown boy” who grew up in ordinariness among them could be
the Messiah. Second: a false presumption about their status as the Chosen
People. They were enraged when, in response to their demand for miracles, Jesus
pointed out two occasions when God worked miracles for Gentiles, not for
Jews.
We who are charged and committed by our baptismal consecration as
“kings” to work at “transforming
humanity from within…. upsetting, through the power of the Gospel, humans’
criteria of judgment, determining values… sources of inspiration and models of
life,”[2] may experience the same
deep resistance. People are not always ready to accept a “change of mind” (metanoia). We need to be prepared for
the same rejection Jesus encountered.
Initiative: Be a steward of his kingship. Keep trying to bring
about change.
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