June 15, 2013
Saturday, 10th Week
in Ordinary Time
1st Reading: 2 Cor 5:14–21
Gospel: Mt 5:33–37
Jesus said to his disciples, “You have also heard that people were told in the past: Do not break your oath; an oath sworn to the Lord must be kept. But I tell you this: do not take oaths. Do not swear by the heavens, for they are God’s throne, nor by the earth, because it is his footstool, nor by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great king. Do not even swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. Say yes when you mean yes and say no when you mean no. Anything else you say comes from the devil.”
D@iGITAL… EXPERIENCE
Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience
Swearing was invented when human beings learned to lie. Lack of trust among liars necessitates the act of swearing. Swearing then should not be in the vocabulary of a disciple because he is supposed to be truthful all the time. Jesus said: “Do not take oaths. Do not swear by the heavens, for they are God’s throne, nor by the earth, because it is his footstool, nor by Jerusalem because it is the city of the great king.”
Swearing is like a pair of crutches that supports humanity’s limping adherence to the truth. A disciple who is firmly standing on the rock foundation of Jesus Christ (the truth and the life) finds swearing unnecessary. The Lord required all his followers to form the habit of saying yes when they mean yes and no when they mean no.
‘Yes’, even without swearing, is powerful enough to save the world when backed up by a habit for truth. Such was the ‘Yes’ of the Virgin Mary to the proposal of the Angel. The Angel could have sworn Mary in, considering how crucial her ‘yes’ was to the execution of God’s plan of salvation. But because the Angel knew that Mary had the habit for truth, he did not swear her in anymore.
Like the Virgin Mary let us form the habit for truth. Habit is formed by repetition until the act becomes part of one’s lifestyle. Steven Covey wrote: “sow a thought, reap an action; sow an action, reap a habit; sow a habit, reap a character; sow a character, reap destiny”. For Covey, your thoughts must ripen into action. When your action is repeated, you develop a habit. From here starts your destiny.
Let’s learn from this play of the word habit. “Habit” is very hard to remove. If you remove H, you still have ‘a bit’. If you remove H and A, you still have ‘bit’. Even if you remove letters H, A and B, you still have ‘it’. Indeed, habit is hard to remove. If so, then let’s start forming the habit for truth today so that swearing won’t ever be necessary. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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