Wednesday, July 17, 2013 15th Week in Ordinary Time 1st Reading:
Ex 3:1-6, 9-12 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. 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). Mindful of this we leave our quest for immediate 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. This attitude is definitely more beneficial. For 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. A person reacting this way has already reached an appreciable level of spiritual sensitivity.
This kind of spiritual sensitivity is available only to those who are prayerfully linked to God. Prayer is God’s chance to reveal to the humble the things which are hidden from the wise and 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 so linked to God in prayer do not only rejoice over the misfortune of others but even actively seek their destruction out. 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.
Let us be prayerfully connected to God so that we too may exercise wisdom more beneficially in the spirit of charity. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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