25 February 2019
Monday of the Seventh Week of Ordinary Time
By faith we enter into relationship with the one who alone is “wise and truly awe-inspiring, seated upon his throne,” whome Sirach speaks of today. There is only One who is the source of all wisdom which is lavished upon all creation. The Lord, our kind and gentle Lord, reigns in majesty over us. Yet, through faith we are united to Him and to His wisdom and strength. How quickly this fact escapes from us, though. In today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters his disciples whom He has sent to serve others, embroiled in arguments with them. The cause of the quarrel? The ineffectiveness of the disciples: “I asked your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable to do so.” How many arguments come from presuming our own power and asserting ourselves, rather than humbly making way for Christ? How ineffective, and ineffectively argumentative, we become when we forget to keep our eyes on Him.
As Jesus Himself enters into discussion with the man in the crowd, He seeks to strengthen the man’s faith which His disciples seem to have disappointed. “‘If you can!’ Everything is possible to the one who has faith.” See how even our offering of our littleness and powerlessness unites us to the one wise and truly awe-inspiring one, seated upon his throne. By faith we are transformed from those who can do nothing, to instruments of the Lord’s wisdom and strength. “This kind can only come out through prayer.” Only by humble focus on, relationship with the only one who is wise and truly awe-inspiring do we have an effect, do quarrels cease, evils flee, and peace come to reign in our lives once more.
At the end of every proclamation of the Gospel at Mass, the deacon or priest quietly prays the following petition as he kisses the text of the Gospel: “Through the words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.” This week, let us especially unite our prayers to this petition. Let us as the Lord to purify our minds and hearts through attending to His wisdom.