Today’s reading from St Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks upon God’s judgment. It strikes us that at the beginning of today’s reading, Paul speaks very harshly against those who are very quick to judge their brother without showing any mercy, stating that we often setting a high standard for judging other, but often fail to hold ourselves to that same high standard. Paul states that we are going to judge according to the way we adhere to God’s truth and according to our good works. Last week, in a homily, I spoke about Frederic Ozanam, who was one of the founders of the Society of St Vincent De Paul. He founded that group while he was a student at the University of Paris. At the time, Christianity was not very popular at all amongst the college students, since this was during the years right after the French Revolution when Christianity was under attack in France. While testifying for the values of the Christian faith in a student debate, a fellow student asked him how he was living out the values of the faith and how he was reaching out to the poor. Ozanam took this challenge to heart. With the Society of St Vincent De Paul, he found a concrete way to reach out to the poor in his own life. In our belief that we will be judge by God in end times should bring about a call to greater responsibility within us. We recall Jesus telling us that we often can see a speck of dust in our brother’s eye, but fail to recognize the beam of wood in our own eye. Paul states: eternal life (will be) to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works, but wrath and fury to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness.” We should take a reading like this to heart, thinking about the way we are living out the values of faith in our daily lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment