COLLECT SERIES
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THE MASS: COLLECT SERIES ICON. |
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.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ,
your Son,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one
God, for ever and ever.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
In making this prayer tangible
for during the week, the following reflection questions emerged:
- What are the commands of God’s sacred law?
- Why did found His commands upon love of You,
and neighbour?
- What difference/impact will this have on my
life this coming week?
- What are the areas in my life that I struggle
in relation to love and keeping His precepts?
- Why do I want to merit eternal life?
- What steps will I take this coming week to move
towards meriting eternal life?
GOSPEL REFLECTION
The Gospel is from St. Luke 16:1-13. There are 2
lessons for us as disciples in today’s Gospel.
They are:
·
Do not to become the slaves of earthly things. Christ warned against was not the just
acquisition of this world's goods but their unjust acquisition, and the
dishonest use of them when they were justly acquired.
·
The unjust steward showed more enterprise/interest in providing
for his earthly happiness when he would lose his employment and was greater and
keener than that shown by most of us in providing for our eternal happiness.
·
We should use what we can spare of our earthly possessions in
helping those who are in need of our help
It was God who
created all that exists in this world. He intended these goods for the use of
man. We are only managers, therefore, of these worldly goods. It is on our way
of managing these goods, not on the quantity we had to manage, that our judgement will be based.
Did I give one
hour a day to God and the things of God, helping the needy, learning more about
my religion, giving a hand in parochial affairs, advising those in
difficulties, spiritual or temporal, praying for my own and my neighbour's needs—yet even if I did, it is less than one-tenth of the free time I had at my
own disposal.
If I did not, if
I barely managed to to get in the Sunday Mass and a few hasty prayers, could
anyone suggest that I was showing great interest and was very enterprising as
far as my future life was concerned? God is very generous with me. He gives me
lots of time for providing for my health and temporal needs each week, and a
lot of free time besides. I should not express surprise if he is disappointed
at how little of that wonderful gift of time I am willing to give back to him.
The unjust steward was far more enterprising as regards earthly provision for
himself.
The second lesson
our Lord wishes to teach us is that we should use what we can spare of our
earthly possessions in helping those who are in need of our help. By doing
that, we will be making friends who will help us at the judgment seat to get a
lasting reception in heaven.
Remember that description of the judgment which our Lord gave when
he said, "I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was naked and you clothed
me"? What we do for the needy, we do for Him. Those whom we help, as far
as we can, will be witnesses testifying for us when our final examination, on
which our eternity will depend, comes upon us.
The challenge
then for us is to take these warnings seriously. We need to be resolved this week to start
afresh and examine our lives in the light of this Gospel.
We may like to review our attitude towards earthly goods i.e. Never
let them take up all your time. You have a far more serious purpose in life.
Give it a little more thought and enterprise than you have been doing.
Secondly, be grateful to God for what He has given you in this
life. You might like to have a lot more, but God knows best. Work honestly and
be generous with what you have. You are serving God, not money. God will be
waiting for you where there is no currency, and where the one bank account that
matters will be the good use that you made of your time and your share of this
world's goods while you were alive.
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