Friday September 13, 2024

To defeat evil, we have to be flexible so that we can get around its obstacles.

Good News Reflection for:

Friday of the 23rd Week of Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint John Chrysostom, Bishop and Doctor of the Church
September 13, 2024

Today’s Prayer:

Lord, heal my wounds and fill my heart with Your mercy. Help me to take Your love to my brothers and sisters without hurting or judging them. Amen.

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Today’s Readings:

1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22b-27
Ps 84:3-6, 12
Luke 6:39-42
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/091324.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-september-13-2024

Flexibility is necessary to spread the Good News

In our first reading today, St. Paul shows us the importance of flexibility. He was single-minded in his commitment to spread the Good News, but he was open-minded about how to do it.

After 2000 years of rules and norms and Canon Laws, it’s easy to forget where there’s actually room for flexibility. Or perhaps we’re afraid of change and adaptation, because we interpret “flexibility” as an open door for the ways of the world — but that’s not the kind of flexibility that Paul promoted.

Paul maintained strict obedience to God’s commands and embraced his obligation to preach the Gospel, yet he remained flexible in how he preached it. His calling is our calling, too: We should all be running passionately for the eternal prize that is given to winners in the race against evil. And to defeat evil, we have to be flexible so that we can get around its obstacles.

An example of Pauline flexibility is how he preached without charging a fee. Jesus said that servants of God should be paid (see Luke 10:7; Paul acknowledged it two lines above today’s scripture, in verse 14). Does this mean he was disobeying Christ? Of course not, Paul chose to obey the higher command of making himself “a slave to all”.

And by becoming “all things to all, to save at least some”, he met people where they were at, sharing the Good News with them in ways that they could understand.

A good example of this is young adult outreach ministry that uses the popular tools of today’s culture to attract people who are on the edge of belief and who are disconnected from the institutional Church. We can draw them into the Gospel by inviting open discussion without criticizing them for where they are in their spiritual journeys.

For the sake of a person’s salvation, we are called to be flexible by not expecting them to adhere to every Church rule before teaching them how to find and embrace Jesus in those rules. We help no one when we condemn them for what they’re doing wrong, but we help some when we invite them to grow at a pace that doesn’t drive them away.

People are only accountable for their sins when they know they are sinning and freely choose to disobey anyway. We, on the other hand, having learned the truth, are accountable for the love and knowledge that we fail to give them. As Jesus says in today’s Gospel reading, we’re being hypocritical, fussing over the speck of their accountability while a huge log of our own accountability is jamming up our vision and blinding us to the mercy that God is flexibly offering to all of us.

For more on this topic, read our WordByte “What Jesus Teaches us about True Friendship” @ wordbytes.org/spiritual-growth/what-jesus-teaches-about-true-friendship/

© by Terry A. Modica, Good News Ministries

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