December 13, 2013
Friday,
2nd Week of Advent
St. Lucy
1st Reading: Is 48:17–19
Gospel: Mt 11:16–19
Jesus said to the crowds, “Now, to what can I compare the people of this day? They are like children sitting in the marketplace, about whom their companions complain: ‘We played the flute for you but you would not dance. We sang a funeral song but you would not cry!’
“For John came fasting and people said: ‘He is possessed.’ Then the Son of Man came, he ate and drank, and people said: ‘Look at this man! A glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet the outcome will prove Wisdom to be right.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
People never do things right in the eyes of God. This was what Jesus wanted to point out when he compared the people of his time to children who cannot appropriately respond to a given stimulus. The downside was that the incapacity was not due to any physical impairment but to too much preoccupation with incidental matters such as matters of the flesh. “Now, to what can I compare the people of this day?” Jesus asked. “They are like children sitting in the marketplace, about whom their companions complain: ‘We played the flute for you but you would not dance. We sang a funeral song but you would not cry!’
Jesus himself explained the metaphor in this wise: “John came fasting and people said: ‘He is possessed.’ Then the Son of Man came, he ate and drank, and people said: ‘Look at this man! A glutton and drunkard…!’ ” This situation however did not deter Jesus from carrying out his mission. Having intrinsic power of its own, the fulfillment of Jesus’ salvific work was to be its own vindication. “The outcome will prove Wisdom to be right”, he said.
Nothing much has changed today; people still don’t do things right. When certain family members are alive, people wish these people were somewhere else. But when these “unwanted people” are dead, they cry their hearts out and wish they’d come back to life. When people are jobless, they move heaven and earth to land a job; when they finally have a job, they drag their feet to the workplace. The same attitude operates at the spiritual level. When it is time to feast on a legitimate celebration people go on a diet. But when it is time to fast as in the time of the Holy Week, people go to Bantayan Island in Cebu where they believe eating pork is allowed on Holy Week.
Even if we don’t do things right, God will still carry out his plan of salvation. Faithfulness is God’s nature. He will remain faithful to us even if we are unfaithful to him for he cannot betray himself. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, Email:dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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