June 26, Sunday, 13th Week in Ordinary Time
1 Kings 19:16,19-2; Galatians 5:1,13-18, Gospel: Luke 9:51-62
We must not make any conditions for following Jesus; we must trust him completely and be willing to be transformed.
In the first reading, we are told of God's call to Elisha to be his prophet by the name of the prophet Elijah. Elijah gives him the mantle that prophets wear. By doing this, he gives him the gifts of a prophet and the power of the Spirit of God that lives in him.
The prophetic call is harsh. Prophets are generally misunderstood and despised. However, Elisha trusts God and responds to such a call with generosity, gratitude, and joy. Kill the oxen, burn the implements, eat and celebrate in the midst of your own.
Even today, God calls us to follow him. And it does so by using real people and diverse life events. That is why we must open our ears to listen to him. But how willing are we to listen to God?
"To live in freedom, Christ has set us free." Having turned the Galatians into the oppressive yoke of the law of circumcision, Paul reminds them that Christ has set us free. And this work of liberation has been accomplished through the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ.
Paul refers to the fundamental core of faith: the beauty of God's saving love expressed in Christ Jesus. God has saved us through his Son. On our side is to respond to that saving love of God, seeking the good of others.
Let us ask ourselves: how willing are we to rise above our selfishness and always be ready to find God by loving our neighbor?
In today's Gospel, we find three men who want to follow Jesus. But Jesus seems to be very radical with them. This leads us to ask ourselves: does following Jesus need to be a hero, a saint?
And maybe we can be disappointed because I imagine that among us, there are few heroes and few saints, but that we have the desire to follow Jesus Christ.
In all the Gospels, we will see that the followers of Jesus were not heroes or examples of perfection. And it is not for this reason that Jesus Christ rejects or denies them as disciples. In this same Gospel passage, we have seen the intolerance of James and John. And we frequently find signs of cowardice, incomprehension, vanity, and quarrels between the apostles in the Gospel.
Jesus does not ask his followers to become heroes or perfect beings from one moment to the next. He understands our cowardice, shortcomings, and sins.
Do we also set conditions for Jesus to follow him? How willing are we to let ourselves be modeled by him?
Radio Veritas Asia (RVA), a media platform of the Catholic Church, aims to share Christ. RVA started in 1969 as a continental Catholic radio station to serve Asian countries in their respective local language, thus earning the tag “the Voice of Asian Christianity.” Responding to the emerging context, RVA embraced media platforms to connect with the global Asian audience via its 21 language websites and various social media platforms.
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