Thursday December 14, 2023
Good News Reflections:
Making scripture meaningful to your daily life
by Terry Modica
“Transformation occurs when we become willing to repent.”
Good News Reflection for:
Thursday of the Second Week of Advent
Memorial of Saint John of the Cross, priest and doctor of the Church
December 14, 2023
Today’s Prayer:
Lord: Teach me the value of determination in the battle of faith. I want to fight with You in the victory of Your reign. Amen.
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Today’s Readings:
Isaiah 41:13-20
Ps 145:1, 9-13
Matthew 11:11-15
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/121423.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-december-14-2023
The Gift of Recovering from Worminess
![[ Listen to the podcast of this reflection ]](https://gnm.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/podbean.png)
In our first reading today, the Lord calls his people a maggot and a worm. Imagine that!
Yes, sometimes we are worms, slimy critters that crawl in the dirt because we prefer to defend or justify or rationalize our sins rather than rise above them through sincere repentance. We are, all too often, maggots thriving on the rotting corpses of damaged relationships as we cater to the passions of our selfishness and pride.
Jesus was born into this decaying world so that he could take our maggotness upon himself during his crucifixion and give us a new life in the Father’s forgiveness. This new life becomes proof to others that God is real: Others may see and know, observe and understand that it is by the Lord’s hand that we’ve become better people: healthier in relationships and holier in our activities.
However, Jesus never forces us to accept what he offers. Transformation occurs when we become willing to repent. Our sins become motivation for purifying our lives and growing in holiness.
We remain as maggots until we recognize the poverty of our souls. Then God responds to our thirst for goodness, to our desert of dry spirituality, and to our wastelands of poorly spent lives.
Even when we’re slow to give up our wormy ways, God is “gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in kindness,” as today’s responsorial psalm reminds us. By his grace, we can learn. In his mercy, we accept the consequences of our sins and use them as lessons for holy living.
Why are we reluctant to change? Why do we have to get sick on our rotten meals before we repent?
Jesus says in the Gospel reading today that the kingdom of God is taken by force — our force, not God’s. We have to force ourselves to walk away from sin. We have to force ourselves to give up our co-dependencies that substitute for real (i.e., unconditional) love. We have to force ourselves to overcome bad habits, short tempers, distrustful grumblings, judgmentalism, disobedience of whichever teachings of the Church we don’t like, and all the other sins that feel comfortable and preferable.
Once we do this violence to ourselves, God embraces us in his tender but strong hands. He opens up rivers of rich holiness on our “bare heights.” He quenches our thirst for spiritual growth. He sprouts new life from our deserts.
Today, give to Jesus a sincere request to be transformed. Force yourself to admit the sins that you’ve been ignoring or rationalizing away. Give Jesus your reluctance to change. Do it by utilizing one of the sacraments that provides God’s grace for holy living: Confession (the Sacrament of Reconciliation), or if you’re seriously ill, the Sacrament of Anointing, or the Eucharist and the Penance Rite at the beginning of Mass.
Force yourself to follow through on this! Why go into Christmas as a worm or maggot?
For more on the topic of this subject, see our WordByte called: “What does it mean to be full of grace?” @ https://wordbytes.org/spiritual-growth/full-of-grace
© 2023 by Terry A. Modica
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