Collect for 25th Sunday of Year:

COLLECT SERIES

COLLECT

The Collect for the 25th Sunday of the Year reads as follows:

  "O God who founded all the commands of Your Sacred Law

upon love of You and of our neighbour,

grant that, by keeping your precepts,

we may merit to attain eternal life.

REFLECTION QUESTIONS

In making this prayer tangible for during the week, the following reflection questions emerged:

1.What are the commands of God's sacred law?  Do I know them?

2. How might I get to know God's commands more during this week?

3. What is the cost/benefits of keeping the precepts and commands of God's sacred  
    law?

4.  Reflect upon my life right now- am I ready for eternal life?  

5.  What aspects in my life do i need to change to be ready for eternal life?

GOSPEL REFLECTION

Normally in my posts in this series, I reflect upon the Gospel of the Day.  However, today I would like to reflect upon the Responsorial Psalm.  The response in psalm 53 for Mass is:

The Lord upholds my life.

I would like to focus on these words.  Of course, read the whole psalm meditatively.  However, let's examine these words and make them our own this week.

The question arises do I believe these words in my heart? Is God first place in my life?
We can believe these words when our lives seem to be going well.  Yes, it is reasonably easy to say then ''The Lord upholds my life"' or we can be tempted to think that we have created our own success at work, buying the new house/ car, getting a promotion/new job.  It is even possible to let God slip from our lives. We might even say we don’t need God- I am creating my own success.  However, as we know none of this is possible without God. He wills for our lives since we are His children. He is upholding our lives when things are going well. We need to keep Him first place and praise Him constantly for all the good He is doing in our lives.

However, what happens to us when things are not going well. We feel stressed and we can even blame God or we might even say: ’God, where are you or why don’t you care God''.  However, God does care and He upholds our lives in the difficult times.  He helps us through the difficulty and gives us courage to face our enemy (addiction, people who bad mouth us, financial stress, loss of business, health issues etc).  What is your enemy right now? Name it and take it to God in prayer and ask Him to help you to realise in a deeper way that He is upholding my life.  During the day when we are facing the difficulties, we need to stop and say in our hearts'' The Lord upholds my life''. We may say it many times.

The question remains though- do you really believe these words for my life both in the fortunate and difficult times?  Maybe we do but our faith in them is weak. That is fine. God understands. Start with that.  Think of a time when things were going well and then something happens unexpectedly to make it better or you thought you had everything sorted and planned and then God steps in and provides you with an unexpected situation which took the good to great for you.  That is the Lord upholding your life.

Think of a time when things were difficult and somehow you got through this difficulty. Things turned around when you least expected it and not in the way you expected.  That is, the Lord upholding your life.

So, keep God first place this week (and every week) and know that He loves us because we are His children.  He wants to uphold our lives.  Give Him the praise and the honour and sing in your heart through a strong personal belief 

                                     ''The Lord upholds my life.''