Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Opening words

After last Sunday mes­sage which ter­min­ated in Luke 12:53, the twelfth chapter of the Gos­pel accord­ing to Luke con­cludes with a neg­at­ive criticism/condemnation (cf. Luke 12:54–57) and an advice (cf. Luke 12:58–59). Jesus describes the crowd as hypo­crites because of their expert­ise in weath­er fore­cast and their inex­per­i­ence and non­chal­ance in soteri­olo­gic­al fore­cast as well. The inab­il­ity of the crowd to grasp the salvif­ic time in their midst indic­ates lack of enthu­si­asm and zeal in spir­itu­al mat­ters. Such prob­lem con­tin­ues even today. Most people are good at enti­cing the­or­et­ic­al, theo­lo­gic­al and philo­soph­ic­al for­mu­la­tions, but lack prac­tic­al approach to life and exper­i­ence of the com­mon popu­lace. This Sunday Gos­pel taken from the thir­teenth chapter of Luke is an expa­ti­ation and con­sequence of not liv­ing accord­ing to Jesus’ teach­ings espe­cially as out­lined in Luke 12.

The eschatological embarrassment

“Behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” This is the con­clu­sion of the Gos­pel. The dis­qual­i­fied can­did­ates, that is, those who thought they are the right people to be saved will wail and grind their teeth while Abra­ham, Isaac, Jac­ob, the Proph­ets, Chris­ti­an moth­ers, fath­ers, youths, chil­dren, and even people from east and west, north and south are in the king­dom, enjoy­ing the pres­ence of the Almighty (cf. also Matt 8:11). Abra­ham, Isaac, Jac­ob, the Proph­ets rep­res­ent that sec­tion of the Israel­ites who truly believed in the king­dom. On the oth­er hand, can­did­ates from East, West, North, and South rep­res­ent the Gen­tiles who truly believed and believe in God (cf. cf. Ps 107:3; Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). Being a reli­gious lead­er does not guar­an­tee one access to heav­en. It might even be the easi­est route to the king­dom of destruc­tion. Again, being a Chris­ti­an or a believ­er does not mean a per­son is among those who will be saved. Sal­va­tion must be mer­ited by our oper­a­tions and not by what or who we are, or who we claim or pre­tend to be. Listen to what F. J. Sheen has to say on this “I am… certain.…

Conclusive reflection

Reli­gious form­al­ity, reli­gious fraud, and manip­u­la­tion, spir­itu­al infer­til­ity, shal­low­ness, favour­it­ism, empti­ness, and hypo­crisy. These are the major defects of con­tem­por­ary Chris­tian­ity. And the by-products of these are injustice, false­hood, eye ser­vice, super­fi­ci­al­ity, greed, spir­itu­al bank­ruptcy, impres­sion­ism and unright­eous­ness. The prot­ag­on­ists of this Sunday Gos­pel com­plained they ate and drank in Jesus’ pres­ence. But were these the require­ments for sal­va­tion? They saw Jesus teach in their streets. But was this enough to earn them etern­al life? After they heard his teach­ings, what did they do? These are wrong ways of liv­ing the Chris­ti­an life. How many people read the Gos­pel and the entire Bible? Yet, evil and iniquity abound in our world. We kill each oth­er. We fight one anoth­er. We do all sorts of things in the Church and in our vari­ous Reli­gions, all in the name of God, when in real­ity we are after wealth, money, power and fame, cov­er­ing our iniquit­ies with fake spir­itu­al­ity. With the con­di­tion of things today, we can­not cease ask­ing: “Are they few who will be saved? Am I among those few?” Thank God, the decision belongs to God alone (cf. First Reading).

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE:
SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I‑II-III)!! The reflec­tion for the 21^st Sunday is found in The Word of Life, vol. III, pages 468–482. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo
or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com
or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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