Daily Gospel Reflection for October 26, 2018

Today's Gospel: Luke 12:54-59 Amazingly, though I selected random, entirely different days than last year for my Gospel Reflections, I ended up with an identical Gospel passage - today's Gospel. At first, I thought I should try to swap with someone. What else could I say about these same five verses? And then I thought that maybe God wanted me to discover something different in this passage. So, for the second year in a row, I struggled with these verses, which include two unconnected sections. In the first, Jesus points out how the people in the crowds could easily predict the weather based on observation, but they could not make sense of what was happening around them. So often we are caught up in the the day-to-day struggles, the necessary tasks that are required of us. There are household chores, meals, errands, phone calls, and a variety of responsibilities that require our attention. So many that they may take our attention away from the more important things happening around us in our culture and within our own families. In the second section, Jesus offers a prescription for settling disputes, He advocates settling matters with one another before taking them to a judge. He asks, "Why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" How often do we dig in our heels, entrenching ourselves in our own positions rather than examining what is right and how our actions may have wronged another? We avoid the hard work of recognizing our own fault or coming to a compromise with another.

Ponder:

Am I so bogged down with tasks that I am missing the big picture? Or what's right in front of my nose? Am I willing to examine my actions and decisions and come to resolutions with others rather than being blindly committed to my own position, right or wrong?