3rd Week of Lent, Thursday, 3-7-24, Year B
Readings: 1st Reading Jer 7:23-28; Ps 95:1-2, 6-7, 8-9; Gospel; Lk 11:14-23
Optional Memorial: Saints Perpetua & Felicity
Theme: Accept Correction and Be On God’s Side
“The man of intelligence fixes his gaze on wisdom, but the eyes of a fool are on the ends of the earth.” (Prov 17:24)
How true this verse is in today’s readings. It is far too easy for us to get caught up in this world and lose sight of what the real truth (wisdom) actually is. We get lulled into complacency by a relatively good and easy life. We can misunderstand our intelligence and knowledge and somehow believe we are judges over God’s will. We can convince ourselves that we somehow know better than God. We can forget the One who gave us life in the first place.
With the knowledge we gain, we re-write the past, understanding it from a new perspective and changing the original truth to something that now fits our current beliefs. We begin to question why we believe what we believed in the first place.
Sometimes this is good as we recognize behaviors and actions that led to the oppression or mistreatment of our neighbors, such as slavery and racism. But most times this self-affirming awareness can lead us away from the truth of God and into lies such as abortion, wars, and the dissolving of the nuclear family. In these cases, we need to be brought back to the wisdom of God who created us and gave us intelligence to discern to choose to love Him and His will above all else.
In today’s world, we are in danger of bringing retribution down upon us as in the days of old, when the Israelites would be left to their own devices because they no longer believed in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They would become so conceited and arrogant that they left God for the other gods of the Pagans. They stopped worshiping the one true God.
Eventually, their self-righteousness caused God to leave them to their own designs. Without God’s protection, they found themselves defenseless against their enemies and themselves. After their demise, they would find themselves destitute, with nothing to hold on to. Eventually, they would come crawling back to God seeking repentance, and He would accept them back only to start the cycle all over again. We are in that cycle today, and I fear God’s retribution is not far off if we do not change our ways.
God understands our human nature all too well, and so He sent prophets among the Israelites to correct them and bring them back to God and His protection. But the Israelites would not listen and went so far as to even kill the prophets because their words meant changing their lives.
It takes a special person to accept a reprimand and recognize the changes they need to make in order to bring themselves back to the truth. A good person of character and intelligence, who strayed, will quickly accept correction, therefore putting themselves back on the right path. Others will continue to reject correction and suffer great consequences in the end, separating themselves from God.
Proverbs 17:10 says it best,
“A single reprimand does more for a man of intelligence than a hundred lashes for a fool.”
Accept the teachings of Christ. Listen to His words and change your path back to one of truth and holiness. Then you will remain in Christ who can protect you from the strong man. But if you continue to trust in this world and the teachings of human beings, then you will suffer separation from Christ, and the strong man will take away your armor and distribute your spoils. There is no such thing as a neutral position in the Kingdom of God.1 For Jesus said,
“Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” (Lk 11: 23)
1 – St. Joseph’s Daily Missal – Thursday of the 3rd Week of Lent.
Saint James Catholic Church 