For God delivered all to disobedience, that he might
have mercy upon all. Oh, the depth of
the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways! Romans 11:32-33
Rather, when you hold a
banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed
will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of
the righteous.” Luke 14:13-14
Piety
Father, if you are
willing, take this cup of daily suffering and disobedience away from me and
replace it with Your mercy. I come to do
your will, not mine. Here I am, Brother
Jesus. Give to me, all the best that that
leads me to you. Come, Holy Spirit. Set me free that I might live my life for
you.”
Study
In all of my study
regarding the gifts of the Spirit, disobedience was not on the list. However, the way St. Paul makes it sound in
the letter to the Romans, if God did not make us all disobedient, then we would
not have a chance to change into obedience.
Our sins of disobedience are the price we pay for a pathway to His mercy.
Frankly, it is pretty easy
to disobey the Sacred Scriptures.
Primary that is the fact because it is so hard to obey them…consistently.
Here is a brutally honest quote
from Soren Kierkegaard:
The
matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy
to understand. But we Christians are a
bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend
to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we
understand it, then we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget
everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. “My God,” you will say, “if I do that my whole
life will be ruined.” Herein lies the
real place of Christian scholarship. Christian
scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the
Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible
coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall
into the hands of the living God. Yes,
it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.
Maybe that last thought bears
repeating: “Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the
New Testament.”
G.K. Chesterton said it
differently but with the same bottom line…our propensity for willful disobedience
and ignorance of the Sacred Scriptures we are supposed to study daily. "The
Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left
untried.” Christianity has not been
tried because people thought it was impractical or impossible or just plain
hard. Humanity has tried everything
except Christianity. And everything that we have tried has failed.
Action
As you put together the guest
list for your holiday open house, or your Thanksgiving dinner, or your birthday
party, chances are pretty good that you will not be inviting the blind, the
crippled, the lame, and the poor. You
may not expect your guests to invite you back, but chances are, you understand
exactly what today’s Good News proclaims.
You know what it means and why it matters. But will it change anything about your
behavior in the next two months? I hope
so. Otherwise, this would be a pretty tough lesson for a Monday morning when we
celebrate the service of St. Charles Borromeo.
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