Tuesday June 25, 2024

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

“Timing is everything, and only God knows when the timing is perfect.”

Good News Reflection for:

Tuesday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
June 25, 2024

Today’s Prayer:

Beloved Jesus, today I want to ask You for Your Holy Spirit to teach me how to truly love. May Your Holy Spirit’s power touch my heart and empower me to love my neighbors and myself as Jesus taught us. I ask this through the intercession of Your Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Amen.

Powerful morning prayers to start your day:
gnm.org/prayers/daily-prayers

Today’s Readings:

2 Kings 19:9b-11,14-21,31-36
Ps 48:2-4,10-11
Matthew 7:6, 12-14
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062524.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-june-25-2024

The Golden Path

What do you do when you humbly and lovingly try to help someone understand a spiritual or moral truth, but your words are rejected? In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells us to stop trying.

When we offer pearls to “pigs”, they don’t recognize it as a treasure, and since it seems unfitting for their pigsties, they respond in the only way that makes sense to them: They trample on it. Or if they want to please us, they try to eat the pearls but they choke. Under these circumstances, it’s actually more loving to keep the pearls away from them.

Let’s analyze an incident when you tried to help someone change and that person rejected your advice. At what point would it have been best to quit trying because you were casting pearls before swine? We have to become good at discerning when to try and when to quit, and we can only do this well through the help of the Holy Spirit. Timing is everything, and only God knows when the timing is perfect.

Isn’t this how we like to be treated? Don’t we prefer that others keep their mouths shut when we’re not ready for their advice? In our Gospel reading today, Jesus gives us the “Golden Rule” as a sign-post that keeps us on the narrow road (to the “narrow gate”) of unconditional love. The precursor to this was the “Silver Rule”, the ancient Jewish maxim that said: “Do not do to others what you don’t want them doing to you.” But this is not love! Enemies can follow the Silver Rule; it takes love to follow the Golden Rule: “Treat others the way you’d like to be treated.”

Sometimes we think the Golden Rule goes like this: “Treat others the way you want them to treat you, in order to get them to treat you the same way.” But this is not love. This is bribery.

Love is: “I’ll do a good deed for this jerk who’s irritating me, regardless of how he treats me back, because I care about him more than he deserves.”

Love is: “Why am I arguing with this guy? The way I’d like to be treated is for him to stop fighting with me, so that’s how I’ll treat him. He’s not accepting my pearls of wisdom anyway, so I’ll become quiet.”

Love is: “I’m not getting as much love and attention and concern from my spouse (or adult child or friend or —) as I should, but God gives me all that I need, so I’ll give away the love that I wish I was getting and be satisfied with God alone.”

If we live by the Golden Rule, we walk in the footsteps of Christ who leads us all the way to the Golden Gate of heaven.

For a Bible Study on the entire Sermon on the Mount, visit wordbytes.org/bible-study/holy-living-1.

To reflect more about this topic, go to our WordByte called: “Sharing the Light of Christ” @ https://wordbytes.org/evangelization-ministry/sharing-the-light-of-christ/.

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