May 26, 2015 Tuesday: 8th Week in Ordinary Time
May 26, 2015 Tuesday: 8th Week in Ordinary Time
What does God ask us to give up? For the apostles, it could mean their hovels, rickety boats, some old fishermen’s nets and of course the whole world. By doing this, presupposes much great generosity, untiring effort and sacrifices. Somebody said that the word ‘sacrifice’ comes from Latin word sacrificium that means, “To make holy”. It is to take something that is on the natural level, something that is dear to us and to offer it to God; we make it holy. If we are trying to be selfish, bribe God, extort Him or anything else, that is anything but holy and therefore it fails to be much of a sacrifice.
For us, what God wants us to give up is maybe we leave behind our family and friends if we move to a new place. God wants us to give up some friends because they infect us with worldly things and immorality. We can let go some of our time or money due to the needs around us if we want to do something about it. Perhaps we are being asked to give up a cherished possession for the sake of those who need it more than us. Giving up is hard because we are afraid that God won’t replace what we lose and yet He wants to give us even more.
In relation to this giving up I read this personal story of a church leader and at the same time a mother. According to her, she learned this giving up way back in the 1980s, when she was the leader of a prayer group and the editor of the monthly Charismatic newsletter for her diocese. God wanted her to give up both ministries so she could take better care of her pregnancy, but that this didn’t make her sense, because no one else in the prayer group was willing to lead and no one at the newsletter knew how to organize and edit it. After weeks of refusing to believe that God really did want her to quit, she noticed that the problems created by her not quitting were getting bigger and bigger. At the end she decided to trust God’s advice. She quit.
As a result, the free time gave her evolved into writing articles for Christian magazines. Just as she’d expected, the prayer group fell apart, but something new and better grew up in its place. And God sent a new editor to the newsletter who did a better job than she did.
In this regards we must trust Jesus as we accept the changes He makes in our Christian lives. This trust in Him always rewards us with new friends, new apostolate and new blessings that are hundred times better than what we have before that we have given up. He replaces it with a hundred times better, for He is more generous than you and I.
Fr. Joseph Benitez
What does God ask us to give up? For the apostles, it could mean their hovels, rickety boats, some old fishermen’s nets and of course the whole world. By doing this, presupposes much great generosity, untiring effort and sacrifices. Somebody said that the word ‘sacrifice’ comes from Latin word sacrificium that means, “To make holy”. It is to take something that is on the natural level, something that is dear to us and to offer it to God; we make it holy. If we are trying to be selfish, bribe God, extort Him or anything else, that is anything but holy and therefore it fails to be much of a sacrifice.
For us, what God wants us to give up is maybe we leave behind our family and friends if we move to a new place. God wants us to give up some friends because they infect us with worldly things and immorality. We can let go some of our time or money due to the needs around us if we want to do something about it. Perhaps we are being asked to give up a cherished possession for the sake of those who need it more than us. Giving up is hard because we are afraid that God won’t replace what we lose and yet He wants to give us even more.
In relation to this giving up I read this personal story of a church leader and at the same time a mother. According to her, she learned this giving up way back in the 1980s, when she was the leader of a prayer group and the editor of the monthly Charismatic newsletter for her diocese. God wanted her to give up both ministries so she could take better care of her pregnancy, but that this didn’t make her sense, because no one else in the prayer group was willing to lead and no one at the newsletter knew how to organize and edit it. After weeks of refusing to believe that God really did want her to quit, she noticed that the problems created by her not quitting were getting bigger and bigger. At the end she decided to trust God’s advice. She quit.
As a result, the free time gave her evolved into writing articles for Christian magazines. Just as she’d expected, the prayer group fell apart, but something new and better grew up in its place. And God sent a new editor to the newsletter who did a better job than she did.
In this regards we must trust Jesus as we accept the changes He makes in our Christian lives. This trust in Him always rewards us with new friends, new apostolate and new blessings that are hundred times better than what we have before that we have given up. He replaces it with a hundred times better, for He is more generous than you and I.
Fr. Joseph Benitez
