Thursday, November 23, 2006
Friday 33rd Week in Ordinary Time
November 24, 2006
Friday 33rd Week in Ordinary Time - Year II
REVELATIONS 10:8-11
I, John, heard a voice from heaven speak to me. Then the voice spoke to
me and said: "Go, take the scroll that lies open in the hand of the
angel who is standing on the sea and on the land." So I went up to the
angel and told him to give me the small scroll. He said to me, "Take
and swallow it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it
will taste as sweet as honey." I took the small scroll from the angel's
hand and swallowed it. In my mouth it was like sweet honey, but when I
had eaten it, my stomach turned sour. Then someone said to me, "You
must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings."
LUKE 19:45-48
Jesus entered the temple area and proceeded to drive out those who were
selling things, saying to them, "It is written, My house shall be a
house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves." And every day
he was teaching in the temple area. The chief priests, the scribes, and
the leaders of the people, meanwhile, were seeking to put him to death,
but they could find no way to accomplish their purpose because all the
people were hanging on his words.
REFLECTION
There's a beautiful instance of Jesus' tenderness in yesterday's
Gospel. Jesus weeps as he looks over Jerusalem from a hill outside the
city. He weeps because he foresees the destruction that will befall
Jerusalem: its people slaughtered, its buildings totally demolished. He
sees himself as having failed this people he loved. He hadn't
succeeded in making his values attractive enough to them. They have
chosen their future. And so Jesus weeps.
Tenderness sits well on a strong person. In the strong tenderness is
not simply soft sentimentalism; it's the trait of a person who is
courageous enough to love.
Jesus is a strong person. In today's Gospel his fury compels him to
violence. Why the fury? The priests controlled and profited from the
commercialism within the Temple. Animals for sacrifice could be
purchased at lower prices and the money for the tax changed at cheaper
rates outside the Temple. The priests, however, insisted that all such
transactions be done within the Temple. It was the poor who suffered
most.
Jesus did not walk through life on earth as a cardboard figure,
unaffected by the suffering he witnessed, unmoved by evil that pressed
in on him. Emotions surged within him, as they do within us. They were
real, deeply felt emotions. So deeply felt that they compelled him to
reach out tenderly to the suffering, to reach out in fury to those who
did evil.
Jesus, of course, is divine. He is God. If anyone believes that his
divinity made him less a human being, has simply not read the Gospels
with understanding. Jesus was fully human, he experienced everything we
experience in our lives, even the most elemental human emotions. He
suffered temptations, but was through his entire life never once
overcome by sin. Jesus was fully human, as fully human as each one of
us.
PRAYER REQUESTS
We pray ...
- for a deep and profound respect for life, especially for the
unborn.
- for all the prayer intentions in the MTQ Dailyprayer Diary.
- In Memoriam (+): Mario & Potenciano Villegas
- for James Mark Diaz who joined our Creator early this week,
may his soul rest in Peace
and find Happiness with our Lord God Jesus Christ.
- for world peace and reconciliation.
Finally, we pray for one another, for those who have asked our
prayers and for those who need our prayers the most.
Have a good day!
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