Daily Reflection for Friday, March 6, 2020
Peace and Blessings, Friends and Parishioners,
We encourage you to reflect on Friday’s readings at this link:
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/030620.cfm
If you prefer to use your own Bible, the readings are:
First Reading: Ezekiel 18: 21-28
Responsorial: Psalm 130: 1-2, 3-4, 5-7A, 7BC-8
Gospel: Matthew 5: 20-26
Our reflection on Friday’s readings: “If you O Lord, mark inequities, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.” Psalm 130: 3-4
In Sunday school we go over each commandment in detail. My desire is to bring attention and clarification to what might be overlooked. Today in the Gospel, Jesus is doing the same thing. He shows us what killing someone looks like: anger, insulting someone, or implying that someone has lost all moral and religious sense. It is easy for me to share stories with my Sunday school students to demonstrate how these offenses “kill” the human dignity of another because I am guilty of all three.
With some self-reflection, I am sure most of us can come up with those times we have gotten angry, insulted someone, or thought someone was out of their mind (even if only in our thoughts). *Peter Kreeft said, “Jesus is not giving us a morality he thinks we can practice, but a morality He knows we can’t. For morality is not salvation.” Fortunately for us, the moral law is not the Good News. Jesus is the Good News!
It is only through Jesus that we can develop the pure heart that he describes. Praying with scripture helps to change our heart and actions. We have the moral law before us to guide us. We try to follow it and we fail. The Psalm points us to the answer for our failures, “But with you is forgiveness, that you may be revered.” (verse 4).
Our sin creates a gap that separates us from God. The Good News is that our loving Father sent Jesus to bridge the gap that our sin creates between us and heaven. His open arms on the cross, allow us to walk across the gap. We can receive forgiveness and enter heaven. Praise God!
Reconciliation is the Sacrament of love that Jesus gave us. Have you been recently?
Blessings for the journey!
Paula Paul
*You Can Understand the Bible, Peter Kreeft, Ignatius Press 2005