Wednesday, July 13, 2016
15th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: Is 10: 5-7. 13b-16
Gospel: Matthew 11:25-27
On one occasion Jesus said, “Father, Lord of heaven and earth, I praise you, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to simple people. Yes, Father, this is what pleased you.
“Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
The misfortune of an enemy gladdens a bitter heart, but the heart of the godly bleeds in sympathy. A bitter person rejoices over the fall of an enemy because he finds in revenge the perfect balm to sooth his aching heart. “Revenge is sweet” is not Greek to the vengeful heart. But it should be to a Christian! True followers of Christ turn the other cheek. “Vengeance is mine, I will repay”, says the Lord (Deut. 32:35). Because vengeance belongs to God, we leave our quest for perfect justice to the hands of God. Revenge is not sweet; God’s vengeance is! When God’s righteous hand strikes, justice is fully satisfied.
A man of God will not feel triumphant over the fall of an enemy. Though the righteous hand of God can strike at this lifetime, a godly man does not see the enemy’s misfortune as divine retribution. He looks upon it, instead, as a timely admonition that he will end up similarly if he fails to bring his life to perfection. While the man with a bitter heart looks at the misfortune of an enemy as sweet revenge, the man of God looks at the fall of an enemy as lesson learned. How profitable to the soul! A person reacting this way has reached an appreciable level of spiritual sensitivity. But this can happen only to a prayerful person. Prayer is God’s chance to reveal to the humble the things hidden from the learned. Those who pray exercise wisdom more beneficially because their source of wisdom is not any human source but God.
Those who are not linked to God in prayer do not only rejoice over the misfortune of others but also seek out their destruction. They look at life from what Steven Covey calls the “win-lose’ perspective. The operative slogan under this perspective is “Their defeat, my triumph”. Under this perspective a person actively seeks the misfortune of others in order to raise himself up. He cannot scale the ladder of success without stepping on the heads of other persons.
Let us be prayerfully connected to God so that we too may exercise wisdom more beneficially in the spirit of charity. -(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM., MAPM., MMExM., REB., Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com.
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