THURSDAY, TWELFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
2 Kgs 24: 8-17 Ps 79: 1-5, 8-9 Mt 7: 21-29
GOD SEES THE HEART, HE CANNOT BE BLUFFED WITH
We often act smart in our interactions with different people. With our intimate family members and our close friends, we are spontaneous and genuine; with our employer, we are respectful, with the powerful government servants and politicians we tend to be artificial and insincere, only to give a good impression and get our project sanctioned. While we are very genuine with those in our close circle, we are diplomatic or calculated in our comportment with those whose favours we seek. We put on a pleasing face and sweet words, but we have no interest in committing our lives. We just use them and throw them. But that cannot be the way of prayer, God cannot be bluffed.
Unfortunately, sometimes we presume we are our own masters and God is only a distant benefactor. Hence, we think of using long and noisy prayers, use high-sounding language as if to impress God to entice him to be benign and grant us whatever we ask. We presume to know our life better than God. That is totally a wrong attitude from the start. We are never the masters of our life. We are but humble recipients of this immense gift of life in fragile vessels. We must nurture it with care and perennial openness to the giver. Do not use the Lord for your needs but discern His hidden presence in your daily situations and do his will. This is what Jesus says to us in the Gospel today.
The kings of Judah, descendants of David were complacent with the presence of the temple built by Solomon while abandoning the monotheistic faith of the Bible. Their presumption brought about their terrible ruin, the exile. God deprives His own people of all these spiritual guarantees and sends them to exile till they should trust His person first. They did acknowledge their blunder in exile and acclaimed in the psalm: Save us Lord! Forgive us, not because of our merits, but for your name’s sake… It can tell us a lot about our attitude to God in prayer.
Response: For the sake of the glory of your name, free us O Lord.
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