31st Week, Tuesday, Nov 7th
Romans 12:5-16 / Luke 14:15-24
We are one body in Christ; We have different gifts.
Ida Wallestad is a resident of a senior citizens' home. One
day she was taking her usual leisurely stroll for her arthritis. Suddenly she
spotted two bright nickels on the sidewalk. "A believer in lucky coins,
she was wondering how she could overcome her handicap of an unbending back,
when along came a blind man with a cane.
"Telling him about her discovery and difficulty, she
put the top of his cane beside the coins. His better back enabled him to follow
down the cane with his hand and pick up the money. They divided the treasure
and the luck." Detroit News
***
How do we share our talents and gifts with the other members
of Christ's body? We can't really pray to God as our Father if we don't treat
the needy in our midst as brothers and sisters.
***
We belong
together as members of the same body of Christ, each with one’s gifts and
talents, with one’s own contribution to make for the well-being of the whole
and for the service of others, in the solidarity of one common destiny in
Christ. We are like guests at the same table, where there is room for everyone,
also for those who are the last and the least in our merely human system of
values. We belong together at the same table.
Today’s
Gospel has partly the same theme as that of yesterday: that in the kingdom of
God, we have to open our homes and hearts to the poor, the neglected, and the
people without name or fame. This is why we take the messages of the first
reading of years I and II.
***
Path and vision can change lives
The double invitation in the
gospel indicates the importance the Lord places on us and the quality of the
feast that has been prepared for us. A feast is a food exchange. Everything
given in this party can be obtained with money too. But only if you feel the
heart of the inviter hidden in what is given, it becomes festive meal and
sharing of love.
Refusing an invitation is same as insulting the inviter. The
most dangerous excuses are those with which we fool ourselves. One of the
unrecognized characteristics of excuses is that theyaccuse as well as excuse
because they reveal our true priorities. The excuses we offer reveal the
activities and commitments we hold to be of greater importance like possession, trade and
pleasure. If we analyse well, these three big excuses are what usually
hold our lives captive. As a result, we are living as physically disabled
people who have lost their health, as poor who have lost the benefit of their
work, as cripples who have lost their true relationships, and as blind people
who have lost all hope in life.
In fact, none of us are kept away from God’s love due to our
sinful state instead we just make excuses. Some others would have given
anything to have the opportunity that we declined. However, God is not
discouraged nor annoyed. He doesn’t suspend the feast but reproposes the
invitation, extending it beyond any reasonable limit. Thus, the Gospel,
rejected by some, finds an unexpected welcome in many other hearts at different
moments.
The first reading retraces that those who accepted the
gospel become members of one body in Christ. Each of us is shared by God with
different gifts. Gifts do not refer to position or domination but
responsibility. Greater the gifts, higher the sensitivity, consciousness and
responsibility. One who considers self as much gifted with God’s grace or by
race is called to embrace and extend the self in the service of others. Only
those who dare to put aside their excuses can ever know the joy of confession,
the peace of forgiveness, or the thrill of living by faith. Today the Lord extends
His invitation to us to be partakers of the life banquet for and with others.
What’s our response?
***
Opening
Prayer
Lord our God, you have made us like parts of a body dependent on one another. Teach us to love one another, for only when we are united can we live in hope and joy and persevere in trials. Only when we are one can we relieve the suffering that oppresses many of our neighbors far and near. Give us this unity in love that unites us beyond the boundaries of death with you and one another, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
***
Saint Willibrord
Feast Day November 7
Willibrord set out with 11 disciples for the Netherlands.
They became missionaries to the Frisians. On the way back from Denmark he was
shipwrecked on Heligoland, an island controlled by Radbod. There he confronted
pagan superstitions by slaughtering sacred animals and by loudly baptizing
three people in a pool where absolute silence was required. To appease his god,
an angry Radbod martyred one of Willibrord’s party. Then the king summoned
Willibrord and upbraided him.
The king demanded to know why he had violated their sacred
places and insulted their god. The herald of truth answered him with steady
courage: “O king, you do not adore God but the devil. He has fully deluded you
so that he can thrust your soul into everlasting fire. For there is no God but
one. He created sky, earth, sea, and everything that is in them. Whoever worships
him with true faith will have life forever. I urge you finally to renounce that
foolish delusion of your ancestors, and to believe in the one Almighty God and
Our Lord Jesus Christ. I call on you to be baptized in the font of life and
wash away all your sins. Then with all wickedness and wrongdoing cast away from
you, you may live as a new man in all reasonableness, righteousness and
holiness. If you do this you will win an eternal life of glory with God and his
saints. But if instead you reject the path of salvation, then be most assured
that you will suffer eternal tortures and hellish flames along with the devil
to whom you pay court.”
Astounded, the king replied: “I see that you truly had no
fear of our threats and that your words match your deeds.” Although he refused
to believe in the truth that Willibrord preached, still he respectfully sent
him back to Pepin.
In 715, Radbod regained Lower Frisia and temporarily undid
much of Willibrord’s work. However, after the king’s death in 719, Willibrord
with the aid of Boniface repaired the damage. In his remaining years he planted
the church there so firmly that he earned the title “Apostle of the Frisians.”
Willibrord died in 739 on retreat at Echternach, Luxembourg, a monastery that
he had founded.
