Gospel: October 4, 2024
(Friday)
26th Week in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 2 / (White)
St. Francis of Assisi, religious
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 139: 1-3, 7-8, 9-10, 13-14ab
Guide me, Lord, along the everlasting way.
1st Reading: Job 38: 1, 12-21; 40: 3-5
Then Yahweh answered Job out of the storm: Have you ever commanded the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might grasp the earth by its edges and shake the wicked out of it, when it takes a clay color and changes its tint like a garment; when the wicked are denied their own light, and their proud arm is shattered?
Have you journeyed to where the sea begins or walked in its deepest recesses? Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of Shadow? Have you an idea of the breadth of the earth? Tell me, if you know all this.
Where is the way to the home of light, and where does darkness dwell? Can you take them to their own regions, and set them on their homeward paths? You know, for you were born before them, and great is the number of your years!
Job said: How can I reply, unworthy as I am! All I can do is put my hand over my mouth. I have spoken once, now I will not answer; oh, yes, twice, but I will do no further.
Gospel: Luke 10: 13-16
Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! So many miracles have been worked in you! If the same miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would already be sitting in ashes and wearing the sackcloth of repentance.
Surely for Tyre and Sidon it will be better on the Day of Judgment than for you. And what of you, city of Capernaum? Will you be lifted up to heaven? You will be thrown down to the place of the dead.
Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me; and he who rejects me, rejects the one who sent me.”
Reflection: “We are called to conversion.”
If peace is tantamount to the gift of salvation, then, humility is the virtue that opens the path toward salvation. Jesus Christ humbly emptied himself (cf. Phil 2:5-11), paving the way for the salvation of the world, both of humanity and of the natural environment. Indeed, humility remains to be the mother of all virtues. It routs pride and arrogance. There are wars in many places because of pride and arrogance. The natural world is being destroyed without letup due to human greed being backed up by the same pride and arrogance, preventing us to see and accept our smallness in the grand scheme of things. This is what Job realized after the Lord has shown him the vastness, beauty and wonder of God’s creation. In today’s Gospel, Jesus gave his sharp warnings against Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. The Gospel passage hints that these places are inhabited by proud people, by people who wanted to lift themselves up to heaven but failed to accept Jesus’ message of conversion. St. Francis of Assisi started a penitential movement that recognizes our need for conversion. We are all called to conversion, always valuing our relationship with one another and with creation in the spirit of humility.
