Friday 11 November
Saint Martin of Tours, Bishop Friday of week 32 in Ordinary Time Gospel - Luke 17:26-37 “Anyone who tries to preserve his life will lose it; and anyone who loses it will keep it safe.”. This is a logic which is difficult to understand. Those who tries to preserve his life will lose it and those who loses it will keep it safe. Trying to preserve your life, you will destroy your life and trying to give it away, you will gain the life. There should be something special about this “life”, which makes it self-destructive when you try to protect it for yourselves. It should have something which makes it self-protective when you try to give it for others. This speciality of the life is that our life is meant to be lived for others. Not for ourselves. Whenever we try to live for the other, our life opens to breathe and whenever we try to live for ourselves, we suffocate our life. Our selfishness kills our life. Our love for the other protects our life. And when we live for God, we open our life to its maximum. How much am I aware about the logic of life that it must be lived for others?
Thursday 10 November
Saint Leo the Great, Pope, Doctor Thursday of week 32 in Ordinary Time Gospel - Luke 17:20-25 “…the kingdom of God is among you”. The kingdom of God is in you. There will not be any great signs or miracles of the Kingdom of God outside because it is the love of God placed in your heart. That love which you must make it grow. We normally look for the spectacular intervention of God in life. But the intervention of God is in a silent way because God works at your heart. Our idea of God’s presence is by the strength and power that make things happen. But God’s presence is in the cross and in the sacrifices. We project that our relationship with God is to be spectator of His miracles, but our relationship with God is to let Him grow in us. A relationship that grows in knees that pray, in hands that pray, in lips that pray, in hearts that pray…that grows in each of your actions united with the action of Jesus in the Cross.
Wednesday 9 November
Dedication of the Lateran Basilica Gospel - John 2:13-22 “But he was speaking of the sanctuary that was his body, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the words he had said.”. Our body is also a sanctuary as St. Paul says. We have inside us the life of Christ which we have received in the sacrament of baptism. It’s our vocation to make it into His Father’s house. For this we must take out of my heart, all that make it a market. The activities of my heart which transforms everything into business relations where my primary aim is my profit. Whenever I think what I gain from this, I am setting up my market. Whenever I think how I can use this occasion to grow in the divine life I have in me, I am making my heart into Father’s house. Jesus wants to purify us from the market principles and wants to strength us with the three days’ principle. The principle of cross. The principle which asks us to give up everything for the other. That is the principle which makes our heart fully into the Father’s house.
Tuesday 8 November
Tuesday of week 32 in Ordinary Time Gospel - Luke 17:7-10 “We are merely servants: we have done no more than our duty.” We are merely servants but chosen to be servants by the Lord who knows us. We know our limits. We know our difficulties. We know our weaknesses. My limits, my difficulties and my weaknesses do not hinder me in doing my mission. Because the one who called me knew all these and still, He called me. That is the beauty of Christian vocation. My limitation is the starting point of His grace. This gives me the courage to overcome my limits, to exceed my difficulties, to surpass my weakness because it is not my capacities, it is not capabilities, and it is not my strength but it’s His grace. So, what we need to have in life is an eternal gratitude for the grace which works through me. The grace that makes me an instrument of His grace to work miracles.