8th Week, Friday, May 29
Friday, 1 Peter 4:7-13: Don’t be
surprised by trials; Their purpose is to test you.
Abraham Lincoln was acquainted with
failure. It dogged him all his life. In 1832, he was defeated for the
legislature. In 1833, his business failed. In 1836, he had a nervous breakdown.
In 1843, he lost the nomination for Congress. In 1854, he was defeated for the
Senate. In 1856, he lost the nomination for vice president. Then, in 1860, he
was elected president.
Lincoln was well prepared for the
defeats and setbacks that bruised the nation during the Civil War years.
Another man might have collapsed under the ordeal, but not Lincoln.
Failure and setback had taught him
how to ride out the storms of discouragement.
***
Recall some setback that we
weathered well. "God selects his own instruments, and sometimes they are
queer ones; for instance, he chose me to steer the ship through a great
crisis." Abraham Lincoln
****
Introduction
Christians
have received God’s saving grace. As good stewards, they must pass it on
through mutual love and hospitality. If they endure in trials, they are sharing
in Christ’s suffering and should rejoice.
There
was a feast of Dedication of the Temple, which was in fact a rededication or
cleansing of it after its Gentile defilement under Antiochus Epiphanes (2
Mac 10:5). Jesus now cleanses the Temple in a different way: expelling the
buyers and sellers from the court of the Gentiles. (We Gentiles
remember that for him!) The story of his cleansing of the Temple is sandwiched
between two halves of the story of the barren fig-tree. The significance is
this: like the fig-tree, which is all leaves and no fruit, the Temple worship
is more show than reality. He never said, By their leaves you shall know them!
The
gospel of today speaks of several things: the temple as a place of worship and
prayer, not of business, and the need for faith, prayer, and forgiveness. And
we must bear fruit. Let us also drive out of our lives what does not belong
there, so that we can serve God better.
Opening
Prayer
Holy
God, We often turn our hearts into houses of pride and greed rather than into
homes of love and goodness where you can feel at home. Destroy the temple of
sin in us, drive out all evil from our hearts and make us living stones of a
community in which can live and reign Your Son Jesus Christ, our living Lord
forever and ever.
Prayers of the Faithful
–
That the Church may examine itself regularly how it could serve God and the
people of God better and let God purify it to make it more faithful to the
gospel, we pray:
–
That we may cleanse the temple of our hearts by asking forgiveness from the
Lord for our wrongs, we pray:
–
That, like good fruit trees, we may bear fruit by not merely avoiding evil but
doing deeds of mercy and love, we pray:
Prayer
over the Gifts
Lord
God, our Father, with the bread of life and the wine of joy of himself your Son
will renew the covenant with us. Let Jesus give us the will and the love to be
faithful to its demands the way he was faithful to it, even if it meant the
cross. For we wish to give you true worship with and through Jesus Christ our
Lord.
Prayer
after Communion
Our
faithful God, You have given us in this eucharist Your Son Jesus Christ to show
us what loyal obedience means. Let your Son be alive in us, so that our
Christian community may be the temple in which he lives and where he gathers us
together as his brothers and sisters. Keep us from all formalism, that we may
worship you with our lives and bear fruit that lasts. We ask this through
Christ our Lord.
Blessing
We
must worship God in spirit and in truth, so that our lives correspond to what
we believe in and that we serve God and people. May Almighty God bless you, the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
REFLECTIONS
By Rolnd J. Faley
One
thing emerges clearly in today’s Gospel. Jesus was displeased with the manner
in which temple ritual was being observed. It was a question of too much
“fluff’ and not enough substance. The cornerstone of all worship offered to God
is faith, and it can easily happen that in caring about secondary features of
cult we can lose sight of what is truly essential.
The
letter of Peter today highlights some of the primary manifestations of faith.
Within the community, faith must mean above all “love for one another.” Love is
shown in various ways. Hospitality without complaint and placing our gifts and
talents at the service of one another, speaking in God’s name and acting with
God’s strength. When called to endure suffering we are to unite our hardship
with the suffering of Christ. In short, in all that we do, God is glorified.
What
we are speaking of here is a manner of living. It does not mean that we
consciously spiritualize everything we do throughout the day. But it does mean
that we so thoroughly incorporate the Gospel values into our daily actions
that we strive to do what is right as a matter of course.
The
tree in today’s Gospel was filled with foliage but nothing more—it had the
appearance of life but was not nourishing. As regular churchgoers, we sometimes
settle for the externals, the beautiful “foliage” of religious observation that
is barren of true spiritual fruit. That is why it is so important to keep our
spiritual life before our eyes. Today’s readings touch on the heart of our
faith. They raise questions that we should certainly heed.
Concern
with externals
Faith
and charity in our lives
Acting
with faith reflexively
========
Throw away the mountains of
rigidity
Mark
presents two stories to convey the dryness and barrenness of the people of
Israel's religiosity; these signs signal the chosen people's infidelity to
their God. The fig tree that had no fruit when Jesus "felt
hungry",; and the expulsion of the businesspeople from the temple - both
signs highlight the lack of faith among the chosen ones.
The
Prophets of the Old Testament had already denounced such "empty" and
barren cult of “people honouring God with their lips but their heart is
far from Jesus ." The fig tree with full leaves symbolises the
Jewish religion. It looked so lively and in good shape, but it had no fruit!
Mark is trying to present the state of religion at the time – it appeared full
of life and thriving, like the green fig tree, but a closer look reveals it is
barren! And Jesus even "curses" the fig tree to express the
radical dryness and sterility of these chosen people.
Saint
John says: “whoever says that he loves God and does not keep his commandments
is a liar”; St. Matthew would remind us: “by their works you will
know them; a good tree does not bear bad fruit ”. A religion is useless if it
has only prayers, devotions, religious associations and apostolic movements,
but they do not contribute to solving the problems of the poor and
marginalised.
It
is not enough either to give bread to the hungry, drink to the thirsty and
clothe the naked, but we should also care for the dignity of these people.
Jesus’ disruption of the temple's regular activities was deliberately
provocative. He took on the priestly establishment right at their seat of
power. His actions were not directed particularly against crooked dealings, but
at the essential requirements for any worship in the temple
By
splitting Jesus's comments on the fig tree and placing them before and after
the cleansing of the temple, Mark intended his readers to see the fate of the
fig tree as shedding light on the meaning of his actions in the temple.
“Should
people say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea, it would
happen.’ The mountain to which Jesus was referring was about the whole
religious, social and cultural system centred on the temple. The previous day,
Jesus had symbolically halted the temple's activities. Now he was referring to
the overthrow of the whole system. The system had been cursed and had withered
radically to its roots. For all its outward show, it had failed to produce
fruit, the fruit of genuine inclusiveness.
