31st Week, Tuesday, Nov 7th
Romans 12:5-16 / Luke 14:15-24
We are one body in Christ; We have different gifts.
Ida Wallestad is a resident of a senior citizens' home. One day she was taking her usual leisurely stroll for her arthritis. Suddenly she spotted two bright nickels on the sidewalk. "A believer in lucky coins, she was wondering how she could overcome her handicap of an unbending back, when along came a blind man with a cane.
"Telling him about her discovery and difficulty, she put the top of his cane beside the coins. His better back enabled him to follow down the cane with his hand and pick up the money. They divided the treasure and the luck." Detroit News
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How do we share our talents and gifts with the other members of Christ's body? We can't really pray to God as our Father if we don't treat the needy in our midst as brothers and sisters.
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We belong together as members of the same body of Christ, each with one’s gifts and talents, with one’s own contribution to make for the well-being of the whole and for the service of others, in the solidarity of one common destiny in Christ. We are like guests at the same table, where there is room for everyone, also for those who are the last and the least in our merely human system of values. We belong together at the same table.
Today’s Gospel has partly the same theme as that of yesterday: that in the kingdom of God, we have to open our homes and hearts to the poor, the neglected, and the people without name or fame. This is why we take the messages of the first reading of years I and II.
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Path and vision can change lives
The double invitation in the gospel indicates the importance the Lord places on us and the quality of the feast that has been prepared for us. A feast is a food exchange. Everything given in this party can be obtained with money too. But only if you feel the heart of the inviter hidden in what is given, it becomes festive meal and sharing of love.
Refusing an invitation is same as insulting the inviter. The most dangerous excuses are those with which we fool ourselves. One of the unrecognized characteristics of excuses is that theyaccuse as well as excuse because they reveal our true priorities. The excuses we offer reveal the activities and commitments we hold to be of greater importance like possession, trade and pleasure. If we analyse well, these three big excuses are what usually hold our lives captive. As a result, we are living as physically disabled people who have lost their health, as poor who have lost the benefit of their work, as cripples who have lost their true relationships, and as blind people who have lost all hope in life.
In fact, none of us are kept away from God’s love due to our sinful state instead we just make excuses. Some others would have given anything to have the opportunity that we declined. However, God is not discouraged nor annoyed. He doesn’t suspend the feast but reproposes the invitation, extending it beyond any reasonable limit. Thus, the Gospel, rejected by some, finds an unexpected welcome in many other hearts at different moments.
The first reading retraces that those who accepted the gospel become members of one body in Christ. Each of us is shared by God with different gifts. Gifts do not refer to position or domination but responsibility. Greater the gifts, higher the sensitivity, consciousness and responsibility. One who considers self as much gifted with God’s grace or by race is called to embrace and extend the self in the service of others. Only those who dare to put aside their excuses can ever know the joy of confession, the peace of forgiveness, or the thrill of living by faith. Today the Lord extends His invitation to us to be partakers of the life banquet for and with others. What’s our response?
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Opening Prayer
Lord our God, you have made us like parts of a body dependent on one another. Teach us to love one another, for only when we are united can we live in hope and joy and persevere in trials. Only when we are one can we relieve the suffering that oppresses many of our neighbors far and near. Give us this unity in love that unites us beyond the boundaries of death with you and one another, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
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Saint Willibrord
Feast Day November 7
Willibrord set out with 11 disciples for the Netherlands. They became missionaries to the Frisians. On the way back from Denmark he was shipwrecked on Heligoland, an island controlled by Radbod. There he confronted pagan superstitions by slaughtering sacred animals and by loudly baptizing three people in a pool where absolute silence was required. To appease his god, an angry Radbod martyred one of Willibrord’s party. Then the king summoned Willibrord and upbraided him.
The king demanded to know why he had violated their sacred places and insulted their god. The herald of truth answered him with steady courage: “O king, you do not adore God but the devil. He has fully deluded you so that he can thrust your soul into everlasting fire. For there is no God but one. He created sky, earth, sea, and everything that is in them. Whoever worships him with true faith will have life forever. I urge you finally to renounce that foolish delusion of your ancestors, and to believe in the one Almighty God and Our Lord Jesus Christ. I call on you to be baptized in the font of life and wash away all your sins. Then with all wickedness and wrongdoing cast away from you, you may live as a new man in all reasonableness, righteousness and holiness. If you do this you will win an eternal life of glory with God and his saints. But if instead you reject the path of salvation, then be most assured that you will suffer eternal tortures and hellish flames along with the devil to whom you pay court.”
Astounded, the king replied: “I see that you truly had no fear of our threats and that your words match your deeds.” Although he refused to believe in the truth that Willibrord preached, still he respectfully sent him back to Pepin.
In 715, Radbod regained Lower Frisia and temporarily undid much of Willibrord’s work. However, after the king’s death in 719, Willibrord with the aid of Boniface repaired the damage. In his remaining years he planted the church there so firmly that he earned the title “Apostle of the Frisians.” Willibrord died in 739 on retreat at Echternach, Luxembourg, a monastery that he had founded.
