COLLECT SERIES
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The Mass: Collect Series Icon |
COLLECT
The Collect for the 29th
Sunday of Year reads as follows:
Almighty ever- living God,
Grant that we may always conform
our will to Yours
And serve Your majesty in
sincerity of heart.
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
1.How
do I conform my will to Yours?
2. How
can I conform my will to Yours this coming week?
3.
What does it mean to me to serve God’s majesty?
4.
What are the hindrances/obstacles which prevent me serving Your majesty in
sincerity of heart?
5.
What does sincerity of heart mean to me in relation to my relationship with
God?
GOSPEL
REFLECTION
The Gospel is from Matthew 22:15-21. In this Gospel the
following issues are highlighted for us to consider:
1. 1. The dual role of being a Christian and a good
citizen.
2. The nature of our intentions in relation to other
people.
3. The importance of honest communication.
Let us examine each of these now.
1. The dual role of being a Christian and a good
citizen.
God's plan for humanity
man on earth was that humanity should live in the society of his fellowmen. It
is necessary that society must be governed, there must be authority which will
direct the actions of the component members toward the common good, which common
good is principally, though not exclusively, the material welfare of the
members as a whole.
As his ultimate end, however, humanity has his spiritual welfare. This
government, this temporal power to rule and direct the human groups or
societies or states, comes, therefore, from God for it is his will that such
societies should exist. The answer of our Lord explicitly restates this
fundamental norm of the divine natural law. "Give to Caesar what is
Caesar's;" the state authorities have a right to the obedience and
cooperation in all things that tend to the material welfare of the state,
provided always the spiritual welfare of the members is not impeded by the
rulers' demands.
As a partly spiritual being we are
destined to be a citizen of a spiritual eternal kingdom, and while on this
earth, we have both the obligation and the possibility of preparing ourselves
for citizenship in that kingdom. And since this kingdom is of a higher and much
more important nature, man's primary aim in life must be to reach that kingdom.
He must, in other words, find out and fulfill his duties toward God; he must
"give to God what is God's."
This dual citizenship of man and the
dual obligations that arise from it are the common knowledge of all from the
natural law but are made more explicit still in divine revelation of which
today's answer, given by Christ to the Pharisees, is a precise and perfect
resume. We have duties to God and duties to our country and the fulfillment of
the latter is part of the fulfillment of the former. We Christians have no
doubts as to our obligations under these two headings. We fulfill our duties to
God by being faithful, loyal, active members of the spiritual kingdom, the
Church, which Christ established on earth in order to lead us to our eternal
kingdom. We fulfill our duties to our country by loyally obeying the just laws
of the State, by paying all lawful taxes, and by contributing our share,
whenever called on, toward the common good.
2. The nature of our intentions in relation to other
people
In today’s Gospel we note that the Pharisees
wanted to set a trap for Jesus. Note too, that they gather their disciples too,
hoping that perhaps some of them at least would turn away from Jesus assuming
that, of course Jesus fell for their trap.
Jesus of course did not fall for their trap because He was aware of
their malice.
So what about us? Do we set traps for
other people in our lives? Does malice
reside in us? What is malice?
Malice as a definition means the desire to harm someone; ill will. Malice
means that there is a desire to inflict injury, harm, or suffering on another,
either because of a hostile impulse or out of deep-seated meanness:
The
desire begins in the heart and often means that the person is needy in some
area of his/her life.
4. Like many
emotions, malice can be placed on a sliding scale, but it is still malice. It can start out small but it gathers
momentum in our hearts if we do not check it constantly. We need to examine the
reasons why we do a particular action/sin against ourselves and others. We need to bring our heart to Jesus who can
read our secret intentions. Bearing ill
will towards our neighbour is not putting into practice the commandment to
love- to love God, our neighbour and ourselves.
It is important to remember that when ill will resides in our hearts, it
is like a cancer- it will spread and not only can we do harm to others but we
also can do harm to our physical, emotional and spiritual health.
3. The importance of honest communication.
We are taught to communicate from our earliest years. However, what we have learned may not
necessarily be a healthy and honest communication pattern. Learning to communicate honestly is vital for
our own happiness and for our relationships.
Sadly
however, many people in society do not engage in honest communication. It may be
out of ignorance to know how to communicate honestly or it may be that they
have continues a communication pattern that they have had most of their lives
without examining and reviewing it.
The good news for us is that we can, with commitment and work change our
communication patterns to a healthier style and learn to be honest in our
communication.
For example: Some people are invited to a party/ office party or dinner party.
They really do not want to attend. Instead
of declining the invitation politely, they fear saying no. Instead, because of
this fear, they attend a party to which they did not want to attend. Sometimes people make up an excuse tor not
attending the party and later are trapped in themselves from guilt because they
know they have lied. They may also be
trapped later as they do not remember the excuse they gave.
Jesus reminds us in scripture to say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean
no Anything else comes from the evil one.
This is in essence honest communication.
We do not have to make excuses or attend parties that we do not want to
attend. We do not have to say yes when
we mean no or vice versa. Being truthful
and honest helps us live with a clear conscience spiritually but it also nourishes
our emotional and physical wellbeing.
Returning to the Gospel of today, we may ask why did the Pharisees want to trap
Jesus? Why did they feel threatened by
Jesus? Why did they gather the disciples
to come with them? When we ponder these
questions, we can acknowledge that not only did they feel inadequate,
threatened that their status was changing, fearful that they may need to
examine their lives and change, wanted to have a power game with Jesus, force
the disciples to choose that we, too need to examine our lives and see how
malice appears and is operative. It may be
subtle but it can live there.
Today therefore we are challenged by Jesus to examine our lives, to explore our
intentions of our hearts and examine when/where malice exists in us. We are to learn to review our communication
pattern and learn to be honest before Him and before others as well as
ourselves. We are also to remember that
we have dual citizenship both on earth and in Heaven but that Heaven is our true
home. We must live out the Gospel values.
