Tough messages today in both the 1st reading and the Gospel. Sometimes, we overplay God’s mercy, His desire to forgive and forget sinful thoughts and actions in both ourselves and in others. But the author of Sirach reminds us that “mercy and anger alike are with him.” He’s no baby doll. So don’t provoke him. In order to rectify our distorted thinking and sinful actions, he sends us an urgent call. So, “delay not your conversion to him.”
In the Gospel, Jesus re-iterates forcefully the wisdom of the 1st reading. He insists that our thinking and actions be strictly in accord with what he teaches, but he does so in a positive, up-beat way. We are to remain faithful to what we became when we were baptized, a child of God, a member of the Body of Christ, the salt of the earth.
In order to remain faithful to that vocation and to what Jesus teaches in the gospels, we should develop a greater attachment to the Eucharist, the source of wisdom, fortitude and prudence enabling us to live in peace with ourselves and others, to be the salt of the earth.
Resolve: I shall pray today to Christ in the Eucharist to give me and others, particularly those to whom I am most attached, the grace “to delight in the law of the Lord”, to be the salt of joy and an encouragement for others. And on this feast of St. Gregory, I shall ask the Lord to bring about unity between ourselves and the Eastern churches.