On this penultimate Sunday to the end of the Church’s liturgical year. The central theme of today’s readings is an invitation for us to muscle courage to stand firm in/with Christ Jesus. Especially, as it pertains to the Day of the Lord or the Second Coming of Jesus in glory as a judge.
The Afterlife reality or experience is not just a Christian hope of the resurrection of Christ Jesus through the action of the Holy Spirit. It is an existential reality of our human life on earth. It is a religious or spiritual reality that every religious faith holds onto. To give full meaning to our hard and miserable human existence.
One of the beauties of our Christian faith is the mercy of God that always finds us wretched sinners when we are lost. God’s mercy finds and reaches us profoundly more than we can ever imagine. The nature and essence of God is mercy. This mercy is the saving and amazing grace that always finds and saves us even when we are spiritually dead, lost or weak.
The mission of Christ continues through our Christian vocation to witness to the Kingdom of God with humility and prayer. It is a mission where God calls the humble, the weak and the insignificant to shame the proud, strong and important.
Christ’s mission is the humble acceptance of the need for God in our lives. The admittance that we are naughty and God is all. The mission of God (Missio Dei) is the encouragement of God to us to be good on earth as followers of his Son Jesus Christ.
The readings of this Sunday present us with a clear picture of persistence and perseverance through faith in prayer and the final success that this achieves. Especially, amidst the hopelessness and the powerlessness of life’s situations around us.
Gratitude or an act of thanksgiving seems like something very insignificant. However, it is the purest form of worship of God. It is the most important way of expression that sustain our human relationships as well as our relationship with God.
We must not only appreciate people when we need something from them but also after receiving it from them. Gratitude or appreciation has many faces: acts, gestures, words, things and even thoughts.
Living faith is an active faith against all odds of life. It is an indomitable faith that overcomes all contraries of life trusting the absolute mercy, grace and providence of God. Indeed, faith is one of the superlative forces or energies of conviction in God, on the earth and in heaven that can change, transform or overcome any and everything that comes on us.
The main theme of this Sunday´s readings is the warning of the sin of omission against charity. It is a warning that the selfish blindness to the needy and extravagant use of God’s blessings. A reminder that our wealth, time, energy, talents and personal qualities like words, smiles, and sense of humour are to help the poor, the depressed, the troubled, and the needy. The act of omission is a serious sin that deserves eternal punishment. Today’s readings stress the truth that wealth without active mercy for the poor is great wickedness.
The gospel of today presents us with an eternal truth: the love of God and money are two parallel ways. They cannot or will never meet or cross each other. We are either for God or for the world. Hence, it presents us towards the end with some crucial lines of a hard or brunt truth: “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
What makes Christianity unique from all other religions is the inexhaustible mercy of God in Christ Jesus. The Christian faith is never a religion of punishment. No matter the gravity of our errors, how many times and the manner of our mistakes, the mercy of God reaches all. In Christianity, therefore, Christ is the face of God’s mercy shown to lost humanity.