St Peter Claver

1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-27
Luke 6:39-42

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.

Today we are in a jury box listening to Paul defend his ministry of preaching. “I have no choice; I’m under compulsion” to do it. Free, he has made himself a slave wanting to be weak so that he can be one with the weak, to share with them the Good News, and win some of them over.

Being a mystic of the Passion, St. Paul invites us to share an intimate association with Jesus the Crucified by being one with crucified people. We proclaim Christ Crucified whom we meet in our brothers and sisters, and we come to Christ Crucified by becoming one with them in their suffering. Paul speaks of discipline. Could his discipline be this work of making ourselves one with those who suffer the Passion of Christ, thus enabling them to come to know the Crucified Christ through us?

In today’s gospel, Jesus warns us about hypocrisy. When the blind leads the blind danger lies ahead. It is a similar situation with false teaching and catastrophe. False prophecy is devoid of truth and reality and as such leads to nowhere but peril. False teaching is dangerous to the soul.

We are therefore reminded by Jesus not to be hypocrites but to remember that as we judge others so too will be judged. Usually, the things we see in others which we don’t like are only seen because we do the very things we are giving out about. So we should not judge others but should leave judgement to God and strive to make our lives perfect for the day when He will judge us.
Let us pull the plank of prejudice out of our eyes so that we can see the Crucified of today, and be full of compassion to respond to Christ whom we meet in them.

Fr Joseph
Credit:
This article is written by Rev Fr. Joseph Osho OSJ. Please visit his personal blog @ https://www.blogger.com/profile/10377666931103644634
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