Reflections
for Sunday, October 31, 2010
The wonderful thing about God being God is that He knows us and loves us as
we are, even if we find ourselves in mortal sin. God never stops loving us
and is always faithful in loving us. God created us to love us, not to
condemn us. God is always with us, inviting us to live in His live and by
His love.
For a lot of us, that is not how we ever experienced God when we were
young. This is why the message of salvation must be repeated over and
over. Only one who has come to know the love of God can truly be a witness
to that love. We only come to know that love through faith. Daily our
prayer can be: give me faith, O Lord, so that I may know your love.
In the first reading we continue hearing from the Book of Wisdom. We
don't have to have any academic degrees to understand Hebrew Wisdom.
Rather, we need only have an open heart. The Book of Wisdom is not written
for academics, but for us ordinary people to understand that we too can
encounter the love of the living God if we open our hearts and minds.
For many people, the choice comes down to believing in the kind of God
revealed and spoken about in the Book of Wisdom or not believing at all.
It can be a fairly simple choice: if there is a God, He must be like this
one described in the Book of Wisdom. The only other possibility is that
there is no God at all.
The problem, of course, is that we humans often think of God as only an
extra nice human being. Our God is almost always too small. Someone like
Zacchaeus in today's Gospel from Saint Luke, is an extraordinary person
because he so longs for salvation that he is able to see the divine
presence in Jesus Christ. Most of us probably want salvation, but without
any work or almost without any belief on our part.
Jesus comes to save us and invites us out of our trees to follow Him.
That call is just as clear today as it was in the time of Zacchaeus. When
we see the homeless, when we see the hungry, when we see the naked, when we
see the confused and crazy - and in every similar situation, it is our Lord
asking us to help Him. These are the people who are Jesus for us today and
invite us out of our trees to know the Lord.
We can leave the comfort of the distance we have in our trees and climb
down the tree to follow the Lord. In this, our God makes us worthy of his
calling and powerfully brings to fulfillment every good purpose and every
effort of faith - as we hear in today's second reading from the Second Letter
to the Thessalonians. Transform us, O Lord, and draw us from our trees to
walk the path of salvation.
Readings of the day:
First Reading:
Second Reading:
Gospel:
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Reflections are available for the following Sundays:
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