From The Dust, God Lifts Up The Lowly

Saints Cornelius, Pope, and Cyprian, Bishop, Martyrs

1 Timothy 1:15-17
Luke 6:43-49

REFLECTION

What does it take to serve God? Conversion and humility. Conversion makes us follow God consistently. Humility makes men saints.
For, every act of humility involves dying to pride.Every act of courage involves dying to cowardice.Every act of kindness involves dying to cruelty.
Every act of love involves dying to selfishness. It is by dying to the false self that the true self, made in God’s image is found. Humility is the queen of all virtues.

In today’s first reading, St. Paul tells Timothy and all of us that, Jesus came to save sinners and he is the greatest of them all but if mercy has been shown to him, it means that God wants him to be the greatest evidence of his inexhaustible patience for all the other people who would later have to trust in him to come to eternal life. Such great humility is what God wants us to show to others and to be his witness in the world today. It is like what Jesus tells his disciples in today’s Gospel passage. The one who builds their house on a firm foundation, one who has a firm foundation in God, the Rock will a and firm forever. Do you have God, the eternal rock of ages as your foundation and rock? On what foundation is your spiritual life rooted on? Do the daily afflictions and bombardments of life affect you physically and mentally?

The table of the Lord had become a refuge for the sinner; a place that rendered the opportunity to comfort mourners, turned the sinner to become righteous and it has been a well dug by a pilgrim for himself, but has proved quite as useful to others on the path to eternal life. May we appreciate the victory of Christ and the patience of God over us sinners who have been made righteous by the precious blood of the Lamb. Amen.

The repentant Lapsi can rejoin the Church after genuine repentance and atonement of their sins.

Fr Joseph Osho