SAINT QUOTE OF THE DAY : Monday - June 25, 2018

Monday - June 25, 2018

To keep a lamp burning 

we have to keep putting oil in it. 

-- Mother Teresa

 

June 25, 2018

 

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Monday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 371 

Reading 12 KGS 17:5-8, 13-15A, 18

Shalmaneser, king of Assyria, occupied the whole land
and attacked Samaria, which he besieged for three years.
In the ninth year of Hoshea, king of Israel
the king of Assyria took Samaria,
and deported the children of Israel to Assyria,
setting them in Halah, at the Habor, a river of Gozan,
and the cities of the Medes.

This came about because the children of Israel sinned against the LORD,
their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt,
from under the domination of Pharaoh, king of Egypt,
and because they venerated other gods.
They followed the rites of the nations
whom the LORD had cleared out of the way of the children of Israel
and the kings of Israel whom they set up.

And though the LORD warned Israel and Judah
by every prophet and seer,
"Give up your evil ways and keep my commandments and statutes,
in accordance with the entire law which I enjoined on your fathers
and which I sent you by my servants the prophets,"
they did not listen, but were as stiff-necked as their fathers,
who had not believed in the LORD, their God.
They rejected his statutes,
the covenant which he had made with their fathers,
and the warnings which he had given them, till,
in his great anger against Israel,
the LORD put them away out of his sight.
Only the tribe of Judah was left.

Responsorial PsalmPS 60:3, 4-5, 12-13

R. (7b) Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
O God, you have rejected us and broken our defenses;
you have been angry; rally us!
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
You have rocked the country and split it open;
repair the cracks in it, for it is tottering.
You have made your people feel hardships;
you have given us stupefying wine. 
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.
Have not you, O God, rejected us,
so that you go not forth, O God, with our armies?
Give us aid against the foe,
for worthless is the help of men. 
R. Help us with your right hand, O Lord, and answer us.

AlleluiaHEB 4:12

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The word of God is living and effective,
able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

GospelMT 7:1-5

Jesus said to his disciples:
"Stop judging, that you may not be judged.
For as you judge, so will you be judged,
and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye?
How can you say to your brother,
'Let me remove that splinter from your eye,'
while the wooden beam is in your eye?
You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter from your brother's eye."

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TAKING THE SPECKS FROM OTHERS' EYES

In today's Gospel reading, Jesus warns us not to judge. He's speaking of the sin of pretending to be God who alone knows all that is in the hearts and motives and minds of sinners.

Judges sentence evil-doers, and God, who is the only completely holy judge, refrains from sentencing until the last possible moment. But you and I are quick to sentence people to all kinds of punishments (for example: "She doesn't deserve my time" or "He's entirely to blame and should fix this problem, not me").

However, we are supposed to judge between good and evil; this is the gift of discernment that comes from the Holy Spirit. And we are supposed to judge that a sinful act is evil and that a good deed is holy, as scripture elsewhere tells us to do. What we can never judge, because we are not all-knowing, is how fully sinners understand that what they're doing is wrong.

This warning from Jesus parallels the line from the "Our Father" prayer in which we ask God to "forgive us as we forgive those who sin against us". We can recognize when others have sinned against us and therefore need our forgiveness, but we must also recognize that we are sinners too and need to be forgiven.

If we judge others to be unworthy of our forgiveness, we're now committing a greater sin than theirs: We're condemning them to the absence of our love while glorifying ourselves as superior to them. Even worse, our pride is blocking God's love from reaching them through us.

Think of someone who often irritates you. Oh how we wish we could change people like that! We want them to realize that what they're doing is wrong. The truth is, we have ulterior, selfish motives: Of course we want them to change for their own benefit, but the reason we're irritated is because we want them to change for our benefit, to make our lives easier -- as if they're supposed to be the true source of our joy instead of God.

How can we help these people without sinning against them? Jesus explains it at the end of this Gospel passage. He doesn't prohibit us from recognizing the faults of others. He doesn't tell us not to remove the splinters in their eyes. What he does say is that we must first recognize our own sinfulness. Then we can approach them with humility instead of superiority.

Think of the various ways that others have aided you on your spiritual journey. Now imagine applying the same attitudes, the same types of words, the same patience, etc., toward anyone who might irritate you today.

Doing this mental exercise makes it easier to put Christ's command into action. It's a rehearsal that can help you handle situations with God's mercy instead of irritability, and with his ideas on how to help them.

Today's Prayer

Forgive me, Father, for the times I judged others. I ask You for the grace of being as merciful as You are, hating sin but loving and desiring to save the sinner. Amen.

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God Bless You.....

Rosary Family

The mother of Jesus promised St. Dominic that, “one day through the rosary & the scapular I shall save the world!”