October 24, 2015
Saturday
29th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st reading:
Romans 8.1-11
Gospel: Luke 13:1-9
Some persons told Jesus what had occurred in the Temple: Pilate had Galileans killed and their blood mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus replied, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did.
“And those eighteen persons in Siloah who were crushed when the tower fell, do you think they were more guilty than all the others in Jerusalem? I tell you: no. But unless you change your ways, you will all perish as they did.”
And Jesus continued with this story, “A man had a fig tree growing in his vineyard and he came looking for fruit on it, but found none. Then he said to the gardener: ‘Look here, for three years now I have been looking for figs on this tree and I have found none. Cut it down, why should it use up the ground?’ The gardener replied: ‘Leave it one more year, so that I may dig around it and add some fertilizer; and perhaps it will bear fruit from now on. But if it doesn’t, you can cut it down.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
Sufferings are hardly punishment for sins. Most of what we suffer can be traced to two major causes, namely, comeuppance and the social dimension of the human act. Comeuppance follows the law that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction. A child’s youthful experimentation, for example, will exact commensurate sufferings from him in the future. Similarly, a voter who sells votes at election time for money that makes him enjoy for one day will suffer for the next six years under the leadership of the corrupt persons he had voted to power. Usually one can control sufferings resulting from comeuppance by acting prudently.
Sufferings may also strike outside the realm of comeuppance because of the social dimension of every human act. When evil people abuse their freedom there will always be casualties in the community. Misfortunes like this are beyond the victim’s control. Not even God will strike down the evildoer with lightning because God respects the freedom of the good and the bad person. The only remedy is to fight using active-non-violent means. If to no avail, the option left is to ask God for the grace of perseverance.
Aren’t evil people at a greater advantage with God’s gift of freedom to humanity? No! Jesus warned: Unless you change your ways you will also end like the Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with sacrifices to false Gods.—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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