Friday, 1 Peter 4:7-13: Don’t be surprised by trials; Their purpose is to test you.
Abraham Lincoln was acquainted with failure. It dogged him all his life. In 1832, he was defeated for the legislature. In 1833, his business failed. In 1836, he had a nervous breakdown. In 1843, he lost the nomination for Congress. In 1854, he was defeated for the Senate. In 1856, he lost the nomination for vice president. Then, in 1860, he was elected president.
Lincoln was well prepared for the defeats and setbacks that bruised the nation during the Civil War years. Another man might have collapsed under the ordeal, but not Lincoln.
Failure and setback had taught him how to ride out the storms of discouragement.
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Recall some setback that we weathered well. "God selects his own instruments, and sometimes they are queer ones; for instance, he chose me to steer the ship through a great crisis." Abraham Lincoln
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Introduction
Christians have received God’s saving grace. As good stewards, they must pass it on through mutual love and hospitality. If they endure in trials, they are sharing in Christ’s suffering and should rejoice.
There was a feast of Dedication of the Temple, which was in fact a rededication or cleansing of it after its Gentile defilement under Antiochus Epiphanes (2 Mac 10:5). Jesus now cleanses the Temple in a different way: expelling the buyers and sellers from the court of the Gentiles. (We Gentiles remember that for him!) The story of his cleansing of the Temple is sandwiched between two halves of the story of the barren fig-tree. The significance is this: like the fig-tree, which is all leaves and no fruit, the Temple worship is more show than reality. He never said, By their leaves you shall know them!
The gospel of today speaks of several things: the temple as a place of worship and prayer, not of business, and the need for faith, prayer, and forgiveness. And we must bear fruit. Let us also drive out of our lives what does not belong there, so that we can serve God better.
Opening Prayer
Holy God, We often turn our hearts into houses of pride and greed rather than into homes of love and goodness where you can feel at home. Destroy the temple of sin in us, drive out all evil from our hearts and make us living stones of a community in which can live and reign Your Son Jesus Christ, our living Lord forever and ever.
Prayers of the Faithful
– That the Church may examine itself regularly how it could serve God and the people of God better and let God purify it to make it more faithful to the gospel, we pray:
– That we may cleanse the temple of our hearts by asking forgiveness from the Lord for our wrongs, we pray:
– That, like good fruit trees, we may bear fruit by not merely avoiding evil but doing deeds of mercy and love, we pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Lord God, our Father, with the bread of life and the wine of joy of himself your Son will renew the covenant with us. Let Jesus give us the will and the love to be faithful to its demands the way he was faithful to it, even if it meant the cross. For we wish to give you true worship with and through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Prayer after Communion
Our faithful God, You have given us in this eucharist Your Son Jesus Christ to show us what loyal obedience means. Let your Son be alive in us, so that our Christian community may be the temple in which he lives and where he gathers us together as his brothers and sisters. Keep us from all formalism, that we may worship you with our lives and bear fruit that lasts. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Blessing
We must worship God in spirit and in truth, so that our lives correspond to what we believe in and that we serve God and people. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
REFLECTIONS
By Rolnd J. Faley
One thing emerges clearly in today’s Gospel. Jesus was displeased with the manner in which temple ritual was being observed. It was a question of too much “fluff’ and not enough substance. The cornerstone of all worship offered to God is faith, and it can easily happen that in caring about secondary features of cult we can lose sight of what is truly essential.
The letter of Peter today highlights some of the primary manifestations of faith. Within the community, faith must mean above all “love for one another.” Love is shown in various ways. Hospitality without complaint and placing our gifts and talents at the service of one another, speaking in God’s name and acting with God’s strength. When called to endure suffering we are to unite our hardship with the suffering of Christ. In short, in all that we do, God is glorified.
What we are speaking of here is a manner of living. It does not mean that we consciously spiritualize everything we do throughout the day. But it does mean that we so thoroughly incorporate the Gospel values into our daily actions that we strive to do what is right as a matter of course.
The tree in today’s Gospel was filled with foliage but nothing more—it had the appearance of life but was not nourishing. As regular churchgoers, we sometimes settle for the externals, the beautiful “foliage” of religious observation that is barren of true spiritual fruit. That is why it is so important to keep our spiritual life before our eyes. Today’s readings touch on the heart of our faith. They raise questions that we should certainly heed.
Concern with externals
Faith and charity in our lives
Acting with faith reflexively
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Throw away the mountains of rigidity
Mark presents two stories to convey the dryness and barrenness of the people of Israel's religiosity; these signs signal the chosen people's infidelity to their God. The fig tree that had no fruit when Jesus "felt hungry",; and the expulsion of the businesspeople from the temple - both signs highlight the lack of faith among the chosen ones.
The Prophets of the Old Testament had already denounced such "empty" and barren cult of “people honouring God with their lips but their heart is far from Jesus ." The fig tree with full leaves symbolises the Jewish religion. It looked so lively and in good shape, but it had no fruit! Mark is trying to present the state of religion at the time – it appeared full of life and thriving, like the green fig tree, but a closer look reveals it is barren! And Jesus even "curses" the fig tree to express the radical dryness and sterility of these chosen people.
Saint John says: “whoever says that he loves God and does not keep his commandments is a liar”; St. Matthew would remind us: “by their works you will know them; a good tree does not bear bad fruit ”. A religion is useless if it has only prayers, devotions, religious associations and apostolic movements, but they do not contribute to solving the problems of the poor and marginalised.
It is not enough either to give bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty and clothe the naked, but we should also care for the dignity of these people. Jesus’ disruption of the temple's regular activities was deliberately provocative. He took on the priestly establishment right at their seat of power. His actions were not directed particularly against crooked dealings, but at the essential requirements for any worship in the temple
By splitting Jesus's comments on the fig tree and placing them before and after the cleansing of the temple, Mark intended his readers to see the fate of the fig tree as shedding light on the meaning of his actions in the temple.
“Should people say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it would happen.’ The mountain to which Jesus was referring was about the whole religious, social and cultural system centred on the temple. The previous day, Jesus had symbolically halted the temple's activities. Now he was referring to the overthrow of the whole system. The system had been cursed and had withered radically to its roots. For all its outward show, it had failed to produce fruit, the fruit of genuine inclusiveness.
