Thursday March 21, 2024

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Good News Reflections:
Making scripture meaningful to your daily life
by Terry Modica

“No matter what we believe, the truth remains constant and is not affected by anyone.”

Good News Reflection for:

Thursday of the 5th Week of Lent
March 21, 2024

Today’s Prayer:

Lord, may Your words never seem too astonishing to me. Help me to listen to You with an open heart, always willing to change what is wrong. Amen.

Subscribe to Today’s Saint Quote & Prayer:
gnm.org/SaintQuotes/

Today’s Readings:

Genesis 17:3-9
Ps 105:4-9
John 8:51-59
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/032124.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-march-21-2024

Keeping the Covenant of Truth

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is accused of being possessed. In effect, his accusers are calling him a liar because of the claims he has made about his relationship with God. Jesus turns that around and identifies them as the real liars. But is that fair? They truly believe that their analysis of the situation is accurate. They’re not deliberately lying.

The hardest substance in the universe is truth. It cannot be changed. It cannot be remolded into a different shape. It cannot be chiseled away or eroded into something less than what it started out to be. No matter what we believe, the truth remains constant and is not affected by anyone — not by our desire to rationalize away wrong choices nor by the whims of society and the world’s ever-changing morals.

Therefore, anyone who believes an alteration of the truth is believing a counterfeit, a lie. And everyone who professes one of the counterfeits is a liar, even if they feel absolutely convinced that their version of the lie is the truth. A lie does not become a truth just because we think it’s truth.

This is good news, because since truth is unchangeable, and since God only speaks truth, we know that whatever he promises in his Word is unchangeable. We can rely on his promises with absolute certainty.

In today’s first reading, God initiates his covenant with us. Psalm 105 points out that his covenant is “binding for a thousand generations.” To the Hebrews, “a thousand” meant “infinite” or “beyond counting.”

His covenant with us is a truth and it cannot be changed, it cannot be broken. We can walk away from it, but if we uphold our responsibilities as prescribed by this covenant, obeying God’s commandments, we benefit from its permanence. We can count on God’s love and faithfulness. To “break” the covenant means we’ve accepted a counterfeit.

The covenant is the Kingdom of God. When we enter into the covenant, God protects us, teaches us, brings us great friends, gives us good uses for our talents, and showers us with gifts just for the pleasure of watching us get excited about his generosity.

However, when we explore outside the Kingdom, we begin to believe the lies that we hear. But the King doesn’t want us to live outside of his covenant, so he sends us his Son, who is the way, the truth, and the life of the covenant. We can return to the covenant by reuniting with Jesus in the Eucharist and in the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

For more help on this topic, see our WordByte called: “The Effects of Moral Relativism” @ https://wordbytes.org/faqs/moral-relativism/.

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