Gospel Reflections 800x800 gold outline

Today's Gospel: Matthew 11, 20-24

It’s so easy to look back on the “good old days” when Jesus walked the earth. It would have been so much easier if we could have just seen the miracles that Jesus performed. Certainly, WE would have believed. There would have been nothing holding US back.

At least, that's the temptation to think after reading today's gospel.

But if I take a step back and remove the log from my own eye, it becomes clear that I am Chorazin and Bethsaida. I even have a little bit of Capernaum in me.

Indeed, I am witness to many miracles in my own life. Divine grace is all around me. I can see it acting in my family, my friends, my community. I see its effects on me. And still, there are times when I believe it’s just “too hard”, when I throw up my hands in despair and walk away. And so I reject the grace God gives me. I turn away.

In that way, I am no better than Capernaum: a woman who has Christ dwelling in her and yet who still manages to fall into mortal sin.

Our Lord and His message are very much for us ordinary Christians of today. We are the ones who have witness to His miracles, to His goodness, and to His grace. Let’s be careful not to get so comfortable with living with Jesus that we start to ignore the miraculous and the beautiful, and exchange it for the ordinary and banal.

Let's remember that it's in Him that we are.

Ponder:

Is there an area in your life that you "keep God out?" Is there a place in your life where you are refusing to let Divine Grace in?

Pray:

Dear Lord, grant me the grace to turn my life completely over to you, especially those “hard parts” that I am afraid to let go of. Grant me the grace to live as one who has “Christ in me,” and hold me that I might not fall away from you.

 

Copyright 2016 Christine Cooney

Christine Cooney is a wife, mother, and writer living in central Ohio. She reviews books and talks obsessively about the in-between spaces where life and literature meet, on her blog, Epiphanies of Beauty. Find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.