(Background to last Sunday’s Gospel)
Deuteronomy 8:2-3 takes us to the original place from which Jesus’s responded to Satan;
Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. I've humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord .
Deuteronomy 8:3 says that God gave the Israelite a creative solution. He did something that no one had seen before. When Jesus quoted “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord” He said He was trusting in the to meet His need.
If God is all knowing (Omniscience) does He really have to test us? In fact, how we act under pressure is a revelation to ourselves about ourselves. What is hidden in us comes out when we are under pressure. God wants us to bring those areas that are hidden to Him so that He can fix them.
If we are getting into the same problems, dealing with the same issues all the time, it is a sign that we need to examine ourselves. How we behave, how we think, our attitudes need to be brought to the Lord. Otherwise, forever we will walk in blindness asking God to help without dealing with the real issues and getting the same results.
When do we take matters into our own hands? When we don’t see any other solution. We don’t believe that God can give us a creative solution. Jesus was hungry after fasting for 40 days, He was desperate. But He knew God would meet His need.
First Reading (Leviticus 19:1-2, 11-18)
The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them: 'Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy”.
Most of the time standards of other people become our standards and they can easily lower us down to their levels. When people in higher places are violating principles, people below them tend to double that violation. We damage ourselves by lowering our standards.
Christians have a challenge; be holy because God Himself is holy. Our standard is God Himself.
“Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. Do not swear falsely. Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. Do not hold back the wages of a hired worker overnight. Do not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block in front of the blind. Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great but judge your neighbor fairly. Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Rebuke your neighbor frankly so you will not share in their guilt”.
God does not do these things, neither should we. Our standards come from God.
This, however, is not possible. That is why we need God. Instead o lowering our standards to those of others, we are to come before the Lord with our inability. When we do that, He enables us.
If you try to be holy by yourself, you will fail. But if you come to the God of holiness and tell Him you are unable to fulfill His command, He gives the grace to be holy. That is why Jesus came into this world; to make us holy.
Gospel (Matthew 25:31-46)
“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
Jesus is talking about mercy and judgement. We will receive mercy when we keep returning to God in our inability to be faithful. But if we act in self-confidence and reactions, we will have to deal with judgement.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world”.
God has prepared a kingdom for us before the beginning of the world. We fell into sin and lost the kingdom. Jesus came to fix that problem. God’s plan to save us was eternal. He had been planning it right from the start. He made a creative way to save us by becoming a human being Himself.
According to the Jewish way of looking at the Bible, they recognize the present through the past. They believe saving Noah from the flood was a sign for God saving His people in the Exodus. With God everything is already finished. We reflected on it last year under the theme Finished work of God. The Church Fathers who took the interpretation of the Jews say when Abraham sacrificed Isaac it was a prototype of God sending His son, the lamb of God to be sacrificed.
The perfection that God wants to do in us has already happened. He has already made us holy and made us complete. To receive it we need faith. So lets start believing that God has already given us holiness by the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is finished. Done. Believe this.
Faith is not given to us to receive small favors from Go. It is given to receive what God has already done in our lives. Already the future of divine son-ship is with you. Hold it in your heart. If you dare to believe, it will manifest in your life.
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