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You must not lose confidence in God because you lost confidence in your pastor… If our confidence in God had to depend upon our confidence in any human person, we would be on shifting sand.
- Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984)
(The "bedrock" foundation is God. First things first.)
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GN 23:1-4, 19; 24:1-8, 62-67; PS 106:1B-2, 3-4A, 4B-5
MT 9:9-13
As Jesus passed by,
he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.
He said to him, "Follow me."
And he got up and followed him.
While he was at table in his house,
many tax collectors and sinners came
and sat with Jesus and his disciples.
The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples,
"Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?"
He heard this and said,
"Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.
Go and learn the meaning of the words,
I desire mercy, not sacrifice.
I did not come to call the righteous but sinners."
USCCB lectionary
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Reflection on the Scripture |
"Never take my son back there!" —Genesis 24:8
Abraham insisted that Isaac never go back to Abraham's ancestral place of origin, the land of the Chaldeans. That was a place of pagan religion. Abraham, who had left that land to follow the call of God, knew that going back to his lifestyle before God called him might mean permanently turning away from God.
We live in a culture of death. Temptations in the secular culture abound, and the pressure to "fall away from [our] sincere and complete devotion to Christ" may overcome us (2 Cor 11:3). Perhaps we have a sinful place in our own history. It may involve sexual sin, alcohol, drugs, domestic abuse and violence, infidelity, gambling, rebellion, atheism, contraception, etc. These places and friendships could instantly
pressure us to return to that old lifestyle. We turned our back on that lifestyle when we turned to the Lord Jesus (see Eph 5:3-4). Like Abraham, when the temptation to go back to that place presents itself, we must say, "I will never go back there!"
When the Lord calls us to something, He likewise calls us away from something else. St. Matthew in today's Gospel is our model. When Jesus called him, he "got up and followed Him" (Mt 9:9). Matthew never once turned back, and now reigns in glory with the Lord. With Matthew, follow Jesus, put your hands to the plow, and never look back (Lk 9:62).
Prayer: Jesus, "though none go with me, still I will follow. No turning back, no turning back."
Promise: "It is mercy I desire and not sacrifice." —Mt 9:13
Presentation Ministries
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Abandonment to Divine Providence
- by Jean-Pierre de Caussade
CHAPTER II. THE DIVINE ACTION WORKS UNCEASINGLY FOR THE SANCTIFICATION OF SOULS.
SECTION XI. Everything is Supernaturalised by the Divine Action
The divine action incites souls to aim at the most eminent sanctity; all that is required on the part of the soul is abandonment to this action.
By what means, O my God, I can make your creatures appreciate what is offered to them? Must I who possess so great a treasure with which I could enrich the whole world, see souls perish in poverty? Must I behold them withering like plants in a desert when I can show them the source of living waters?
Come, foolish souls, you who have not an atom of sensible devotion, you too who possess no talent nor even the rudiments of education, you who cannot understand a single spiritual term, who stand astonished at the eloquence of the learned whom you admire; come, and I will teach you a secret which will place you far beyond these clever minds. I will make perfection so easy to you that you will find it everywhere
and in everything. I will unite you to God, and make you walk hand in hand with Him from the moment that you begin practising what I will teach you. Come, not to study the map of the spiritual country, but to possess it, to walk in it at your ease without fear of losing your way. Come, not to study the theory of divine grace, nor to find out what it has accomplished in the past and still continues to accomplish; but to become simply subject to its operations. It is not necessary that you should
understand what it has said to others, nor to repeat the words intended only for them and which you have overheard, but you, yourself, will receive from it what is best for you.
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