July 28, 2018 – Saturday
Jeremiah 7:1-11
Psalm 84:3-6a, 8, 11
Matthew 13:24-30
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/072818.cfm
Podcast:
ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/18_07_28.mp3
Humbly welcome the word that has been planted in you
and is able to save your souls.
Today’s readings call us for Holiness. Holiness is not a onetime activity but lifelong process until the last breath of our life. If we have to understand the true message of these readings we must read the Gospel first and then the reading according to the Prophet Jeremiah.
God has made man and has downloaded the Commandments or the Word of God or Gospel or Holy spirit in to his life. Theologically, Philosophically and even scientifically it has agreed and proven that there is a mysterious force working with in the human being in the form of goodness. The Believers call him spirit of God, philosophers call him Wisdom, scientists call him unsolved mystery and the atheists call him the discipline of life. Different religions or ways of life call him in different names or powers.
The Devil also downloaded his Counterfeit to the Commandments or the Word of God or Gospel or the Holy spirit in to the Human Being. The Counterfeits look or feel or sense as real in their purpose. The real test to identify these counterfeits are to see the fruits they produce. If we read the Parable in the Gospel of St. Mathew today: Master instructs the servants of the fields not to pull out the Weeds, because in the early stage of the growing both Weeds and Wheat look alike but later as they grow as a the full grown up plant ready for produce, the wheats give produce the Wheat and the Weeds produce thorns and thistles.
Sometimes some ways of life look very attractive and good to the eyes but there is a catch in every way of life. How to understand or discern whether these ways or inspirations from the Spirit of God or from the Spirit of Evil ? Prophet Jeremiah answers this question in the first reading :
Reform your ways and your deeds,
so that I may remain with you in this place.
Put not your trust in the deceitful words:
“This is the temple of the LORD!
The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!”
Only if you thoroughly reform your ways and your deeds;
Another name to reform is renew. The Law was put in to our hearts was the pure spirit of God but the Devil put his Spirit in the humans and the Law was manipulated or compromised or trespassed in the pretext of the Original Law. Can Evil contaminate the Spirit of God? The Law or the Spirit of God is Holy and source of Holiness and cannot lose its holiness, but the Evil of this World can blind or confuse the human to see or feel the Holiness. It reminds me a story of a man who found the treasure of Gold in his field with full of dirt covered around and he was not sure of this metal and takes this metal of Gold to a Dis honest Goldsmith and the dis honest Goldsmith throws this metal in to his scrap yard and pays him a scrap value and the man loses his treasure. The man trusts the dis honest Goldsmith and loses the treasure. In our life also we trust dis honest people, ways, principles, ethics which are contrary to the Word of God. All these counterfeit looks like the ways of God, but they are real. These Worldly ways hook us one after the other and push us to the dead end of losing our contact with the Spirit of God or the presence of God in our life. This state is called Hell or absence of God in our life, but God’s spirit does not leave us even after our death, but evil evil spirit also claims his right on our soul on this Earth and even after our death. The final judgement of God which will bind the Evil and burn him to eternal death. God is merciful but if we take advantage of his mercy we are fooling him. Prophet Jeremiah warns these kind of people:
“We are safe; we can commit all these abominations again”?
Has this house which bears my name
become in your eyes a den of thieves?
I too see what is being done, says the LORD.
In the old testament God was punishing Evil people as a process of discipline to purify their deceitfulness. God disciplines every person through suffering, correction, natural disasters so on in their course of life, sometimes people do not understand these ways of God, but all these corrections and sufferings are the calling of God to Holiness. The Church is an institution formed by the Lamb of God and cleansed through his precious blood. The Spirit of God cleanses the People of God every day and prepares a church of Holiness. The Church principles and Scriptures are Holy but the Priests, Ministers, People are sinners and are on the process of Holiness and should not be imitated unless the Church declares them as Saints. Renewing our mind, heart and soul to the tune of the Commandments, Gospel of love every day keeps us away from all the Worldly ways of life. The grace of God can transfer our Spirit to the spirit of God and make this World a place of Holiness, a Temple of God which will bear his name and his name is Holy.
PRAYER REFLECTIONS 