FRIENDS and SERVANTS of the WORD
22 NOVEMBER 2024
33nd Friday Ordinary Time
WORD of the DAY
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were selling things, saying to them, “It is written, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.”
And every day he was teaching in the temple area. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death, but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose because all the people were hanging on his words. (Luke 19: 45-48)
How shall I live this Word?
The expulsion of vendors from the temple is one of those pages of the Gospel that are a little out of tune with our imagination of an ever-serene, peaceful, and gentle Jesus. In reality, those who know the meek, know that they are almost never angry, but when they get angry, it is really fierce. And Jesus has a very serious reason to be angry. The Temple, which represents the relationship with God, is full of commerce and empty of love. To understand the concrete impact in our lives, we should take this example. How would we judge a relationship based only on opportunism? Would we consider it love or hypocrisy? Jesus is denouncing the opportunism that can also be embedded in our relationship with God. If faith becomes only a commerce of demands and thanks to this, it is no longer faith but only religion and it becomes even more pagan. Only when we recover true prayer with God, which is a free relationship of good, does our religion cease to be pagan and becomes Christian faith. (Luigi Maria Epicoco)
May God, who every year gladdens us with the memory of Saint Cecilia, grant that the admirable examples of her life may become for us a model to imitate and to proclaim the wonders that Christ your Son works in His faithful people.
The voice of Pope Francis Angelus 8 March 2015
If we are witnesses of this living Christ, many people will encounter Jesus in us, in our witness. But we ask ourselves, and each of us can ask, does the Lord really feel at home in my life? Do we allow Him to “clean” our hearts and cast out the idols, that is those attitudes of greed, jealousy, worldliness, envy, hatred? “Oh, Father, Do not let me be afraid of Your punishment because Mercy is Your way of doing cleansing me.
E-mail: srmterzo@gmail.com Website: www.sanbiagio.org info@sanbiagio.org Blog: livingscripture.wordpress.com -Comment: Sr. Cleonice Lourenco, FMA
