Friday, September 12, 2014

23rd Week, Ordinary Time, Saturday, 13-09-14

1 Cor 10:14-22 / Luke 6:43-49

We may say it is easy to differentiate between a good person and a bad person. At least it is easy to spot a bad person.

A bad person does what is obviously evil and there is no question about evil concerned, e.g. murderers, terrorists, rapists, loan-sharks, drug-pushers, human-traffickers, etc.

At the root of the evil that these people commit is none other than the evil influence of the devil himself.

As St. Paul puts it in the 1st reading, those who commit evil are in communion with the devil himself.

It is not just about eating food that is sacrificed to demons. It is about being in communion with the devil and taking on the nature of evil.

In the gospel, Jesus talked about a hidden kind of evil and maybe a more sinister one.

He said that no sound tree produces rotten fruit, nor a rotten tree produces sound fruit.

But what looks like a sound tree can produce rotten fruit. In other words we may not be committing obvious evil and we may look like good people to others.

Yet, there may be some evil lurking within us that makes us sin. And in sinning we come into communion with no other than the devil.

That also happens when we call Jesus our Lord and yet we do not do what He tells us. Then we are building our house on sand.

We may look good in fair weather but we will not withstand the test of goodness.

Let us turn to our Blessed Mother and ask her to pray for us so that we will do whatever Jesus our Lord tells us.