Our readings for mass today cover so many of our human tendencies. Surely we can all relate to both of the readings for mass today. They both accuse and acquit us, according to how we are currently living our lives. The past is the past, we can’t change it, but we can change who we are today. Every day, a little at a time we can defeat the sinful tendencies within us, with the help of God’s grace, especially through the sacrament of confession and holy communion.
The first reading for mass encourages us to be focused on the things of heaven, rather than the things of the earth. Life is so short. All the things we chase after like nice homes, cars, vacations, clothes, etc. are temporary. We chase temporary things most of the time in our lives. It seems that many of us spend our lives in pursuit of more money, either to earn more or to keep more of our money for ourselves. Greed can come in little ways, just as much as the big ways too. Just check out the shoppers at a store with a good sale on certain items and you can see this for yourself. There is no harm in trying to saving money so your family can live better, but some people carry this to an extreme. There are shoppers who use coupons and sales and rebates to the point of buying a whole cart of groceries and household items for $5. It’s like a game for them, but is it right? Other people worked very hard on their jobs to produce these items to sell in the store. Moderation is the key here, not greed.
The rest of the first reading from the book of Colossians today encourages us to defeat the inclinations to sin that we all have. This is an ongoing, lifelong process. Perhaps by the grace of God, you overcame sins of the flesh in the past. This doesn’t mean that this same tendency will not crop up later in life too though. It requires vigilance throughout your life, so don’t let your guard down and think you have defeated this inclination to sin once and for all. Satan is smarter than that.
Frequent trips to confession can help us overcome anger, wrath, malice, slander and abusive language if we are willing to do this. Monthly confession can help break a bad habit because it makes you more aware of it on a regular basis. Eventually, you get tired of confessing the same sins over and over again and you will end up doing something concrete about it, if you keep trying.
The Gospel today is about the Beatitudes. There have been entire books written on the Beatitudes. It seems inadequate to consider them in only a few minutes of time. However, if we are living our life according to the first reading for mass today, then we can expect to be poor, unhappy at times and persecuted by others who do not understand our beliefs. The main thing to be concerned about is why we are poor, unhappy at times and persecuted by others. Is it for the sake of Christ? If so, be happy! If we are poor, unhappy and persecuted by others and it is not because of Jesus Christ, that is something we need to work on.
The second part of the Beatitudes that are often overlooked are the warnings, the “woe to you” if you are rich, full, happy and everyone speaks well of you. Everyone who lives by earthly concerns spends their life seeking more money, an abundance of material things, to enjoy life and have lots of friends. This is a danger for practicing Catholics as well. We can’t have it both ways. It’s kind of like the shopper mentioned earlier in this article, that bought a whole cart full of groceries and household items for $5. They went home happy and everyone is amazed at how they did it, but – they took advantage of the manufacturers, the store owner and the workers who worked to produce the items they got for free. There are also poor people standing in the same line at the store who can not afford the basic necessities of life, but are paying for a few items they need with hard earned cash. Actually, there are elderly people who do without food in order to pay for their medicine. That is why there are laws in the United States to ensure dog food is safe for human consumption, because the government found out that sometimes the elderly and extremely poor people were eating dog food just to survive.
This is why Christ said “woe to you” if you are rich, full, happy and everyone speaks well of you, because you are not sharing what you have with others who are in more need than you. We should notice the other people around us and their needs, a little more in our daily life too.
And if other people always like us and think we are “nice” then we are not speaking up for what is right or wrong based on the values Christ taught us. We should also be ok with people who don’t like what we have to say sometimes either. That is to be expected if we imitate Christ’s own life.
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Printable Guide to Confession based on the
