2nd Week of Advent
15th December 2023 (Friday) Readings and Reflection
Psalter: Week 2
Reading of the Day
First Reading: Isaiah 48:17-19
Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea; your offspring would have been like the sand, and your descendants like its grains; their name would never be cut off or destroyed from before me.”
Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 (R. see John 8:12)
R/. He who follows you, Lord, will have the light of life.
Alleluia
V/. Alleluia R/. Alleluia
V/. The Lord will come, go out to meet him! He is the prince of peace.
R/. Alleluia
Gospel : Matthew 11:16-19
At that time: Jesus said to the crowds: “To what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the market-places and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
Daily Gospel Reflection
The Reflection by Fr. Thumma Mariadas Reddy MSFS{alertWarning}
Highlight: Defective perspective!
Guidlines: Those who are self-centred and narrow-minded cannot understand and respect others. because the whole world is what they think and what is convenient for them{alertSuccess}
1. Accepting and respecting others, working and accomplishing together with others demands a minimum openness and flexibility, humility, and fraternity toward others. Very often such spirit is lacking. Consequently, we find a lot of prejudice, stubbornness, and negativity. This fails to recognize others’ worth and to respect their freedom.
2. People of such type expect all others to “dance according to their tunes”. They want the whole world to revolve around their ideas. They demand that all others must walk by their dictates. This is typical of the people of Jesus’ time. In Jesus’ own words, they are like the “children who say to others, “We piped to you, and you did not dance, we wailed, and you did not mourn”.
3. They were so stubborn and negative-minded and so neither the austerity of John the Baptist nor the flexibility of Jesus would satisfy them. They labelled John the Baptist as a possessed man and Jesus as a self-indulgent man. These people do not see the heart or the intention or the goodness or the situation of others. They just want others to think, feel and do what they like.
4. This is the same problem that God has faced in the Old Testament as well. See how God sighs with a pained tone of lament: “O that you had hearkened to my commandments!” It is the same anguish with which Jesus laments and weeps over Jerusalem in Matthew 23. 37-39 or Luke 13. 34-35.
5. “How often have I ‘desired’ to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”. This is the same agony of heart with which he weeps over Jerusalem in Luke 19. 441-44: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes… you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God”.
Practice: Why does grace fail to bring about any effect and fruit in us? Why does the required change and transformation not take place? It is not the failure or incapacity of God’s grace. It is our failure to be sensitive, receptive, and cooperative {alertSuccess}