Daily Reflection Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

Last week we heard about how Tobit and his family struggled in living their relationship with God and each other. This week both Jesus and Paul are instructing us in how we can live and spread love and understanding through God’s laws. Ordinarily we don’t hear of love and law in the same context. However, when we focus on the meaning of each of the ten commandments, we discover that they not only instruct but encourage us to love our God, ourselves, and our neighbor. Paul encourages us to live the Spirit, because it is the Spirit of God that gives us life.

    When Jesus explains the importance of the law, he is instructing us to understand that God’s laws benefit all people. In addition, with “the smallest letter of the law,” he is referring to all those daily situations that call us to care for one another, to refrain from judging others who are different from us, and to encourage those who struggle for social justice. What we learn in the commandments and the beatitudes are broad strokes about how we are to live. We need to look at our own individual lives, families, neighborhoods, parishes, and working environments to ascertain how we are following what God is asking of us. This process requires a discerning mind and an open heart.

    It is so easy to become distracted by the many jaded political and religious positions exhibited through social media. Now more than ever in our lives we are called to examine our relationships, not only with God and people, but also with our life’s principles. St. Ignatius of Loyola, through his own struggles with himself, his surroundings and his God, showed us that we cannot be drawn in by false statements or theories that may be titillating or seductive. We need to examine what lives in our minds and hearts. He gives us a plan of discernment that helps us to distinguish between what is bad and good, what is good and better. If we are serious about our relationships, God gives us the grace to make the right decisions in life. In our daily rendezvous with God, we pray over our resolutions to support or negate what we are called upon to decide.

    I can’t help but wonder how Jesus’ audience reacted or responded to today’s sermon. However, Jesus is speaking to me, to each one of us through these words. Each of us has been given the grace to respond. 

I have made a free oblation of myself

to your Divine Majesty

both of life and of death,

and I hope that you will give me

grace and force to perform.

This is all I desire. Amen

—St. Edmund Campion, SJ