Friday, August 08, 2014
18th Week in Ordinary Time St. Dominic
1st Reading:
Na 2:1, 3; 1-3, 6-7
Gospel:
Matthew 16:24-28
Jesus said to his disciples, “If you want to follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. For whoever chooses to save his life will lose it, but the one who loses his life for my sake will find it. What will one gain by winning the whole world if he destroys himself? There is nothing you can give to recover your own self.
“Know that the Son of Man will come in the Glory of his Father with the holy angels, and he will reward each one according to his deeds. Truly, I tell you, there are some here who will not die before they see the Son of Man coming as king.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
The following story will illustrate that even religious people have crosses to bear, mostly bad habits they find hard to remove. Two nuns, Sister Yan and Sister Angel, are traveling through Europe in their car. They get to Transylvania and are stopped at a traffic light. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a little Dracula jumps onto the hood of the car and hisses through the windshield.
“Quick!” shouts Sister Yan “What shall we do?” “Turn the windshield wipers on. That will get rid of the abomination,” says Sister Angel. Sister Yan switches them on, knocking Dracula about, but he clings on and continues hissing at the nuns. “What shall I do now?” she shouts. “Switch on the windshield washer. I filled it up with Holy Water at the Vatican,” says Sister Angel. Sister Yan turns on the windshield washer. Dracula screams as the water burns his skin, but he clings on.
“Now what?” shouts Sister Yan. “Show him your cross,” says Sister Angel. “Now you’re talking!” says Sister Yan. She opens the window and shouts, OBSCENE WORDS to Dracula. Saying obscene words turned out to be her biggest cross! (End of the story).
Bad habits are real crosses too heavy to bear. This play of words is instructive: HABIT is hard to remove. Even if you remove “h”, you still have “a bit”. You remove “H” and “A”, and you still have a “bit”. Even if you remove “H”, “A”, and “B”, you still have “it”! Is one condemned forever to the cross of his own bad habits?
The secret of removing bad habits lies in self denial. Jesus said: “Deny yourselves…” When denial becomes a habit, all bad habits fade. Ascetics do this by practicing “Agere Contra” – the art of saying no to anything that the self clamors for.
Bad habits are real crosses. The most efficient way of removing them in God’s grace self-denial. It can be bloody at the start, but the blood being shed is the kind that keeps Dracula away! – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website:www.frdan.org.
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