Suy Niệm Thứ Ba sau Chúa Nhật 6 Thường Niên
Làm thế nào để chúng ta có thể đối phó với sự cám dỗ? Có một số tội cụ thể mà chúng ta cảm thấy rất là khó khăn để tránh phạm hay chống lại? Qua bài đọc thứ Nhất hôm nay, chúng ta thấy Thánh Giacô Tông Đồ đã đưa ra những bàn luận vấn đề này của con người. Thật sự đó không phải là một cái tội khi phải đương đầu với sự cám dỗ, thậm chí Chúa Giêsu cũng đã bị cám dỗ. Tuy nhiên, Đấy là tội nếu chúng ta để cho mình tự rơi vào sự cám dỗ và làm những điều gì xúc phạm đến Thiên Chúa. Cám dỗ thường liên quan đến một lời nói dối hoặc chỉ nói một nửa sự thật. Những sự cám dỗ (ma quỷ) luôn cố gắng để đẩy kéo chúng ta xa lìa Thiên Chúa với những lời hứa suông ngoạt ngào.
Qua bài Tin Mừng, các môn đệ đã chứng kiến hai hai phép lạ mà Chúa Giêsu đã làm là hoá bánh ra nhiều để phân phát cho những người đang trong cơn đó khát. Tuy nhiên, các môn đệ cũng còn gặp phải những khó khăn để hiểu được rằng Chúa Giêsu cũng sẽ ban cho họ những nhu cầu riêng của họ. Những điều gì là sự cám dỗ lớn nhất trong cuộc đời của chúng ta? Chúng ta có tin rằng Chúa sẽ ban cho chúng ta những thứ cần thiết để giúp chúng ta loại bỏ những gì là tội lỗi và biết chọn những gì là tốt đẹp cho cuộc sống đời sau?
Chúa Kitô mời gọi chúng ta kiên trì trong việc nắm giữ những gì là tốt đẹp và tìm kiếm những gì là thực sự đầy ý nghĩa. Những sự cám dỗ đến và đi. Nhưng sự hiện diện và chân lý của Thiên Chúa thì luôn ở lại và hiện diện với chúng ta mãi mãi. Vì vậy, khi chúng ta bị cám dỗ, chúng ta có thể đến trước Chúa Giêsu, với tấm lòng chân thành dâng lên Chúa tất cả những những sự yếu đuối của chúng ta. Chúng ta hãy khiêm tốn để cầu xin Chúa ban thêm cho chúng ta có sức mạnh để chống đỡ những cơn cám dỗ.
Lạy Chúa, xin ban chúng con những ân sủng và Chân lý thực sự của Ngài để chúng con cần phải biết nói 'không' với những cám dỗ và tội lỗi và biết thưa "có" với Thiên Chúa
Tuesday after 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
How do you deal with temptation? Is there some particular sin that you find difficult to resist? Today’s reading from James discusses this part of being human. It is not a sin to experience temptation; even Jesus was tempted. It is sinful, however, to give in to temptation and do what offends God. Temptations often involve a lie or half truth. They try to draw us away from God with empty promises.
Christ invites us to persevere in holding on to what is good and to seek what is truly fulfilling. Temptations come and go. God’s presence and truth are with us forever. So when we are tempted, we can come before Jesus just as we are, in our weakness. We can humbly ask for strength. Jesus truly provides us with the grace we need to say ‘no’ to sin and ‘yes’ to God.
In the Gospel, the disciples have already witnessed two instances where Jesus provided food for people who were hungry. Still, it is difficult for the disciples to understand that Jesus will also provide for their own needs. What is the greatest temptation in my life? Do I believe that Jesus provides me with what I need to reject what is sinful and choose what is good?
Give us this day our daily bread and lead us not into temptation.
Tuesday 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Opening Prayer: God, my Father, as I place myself before you in this moment of prayer, I thank you that your love for me doesn’t depend on what I know or understand. You love me because I am yours. You created me. You know everything that I have lived. I ask you to open my mind and soften my heart so that I can see your presence in my life, in the world around me, and in the others you place in my path. I ask that you help me grow in my understanding of all your Son did and taught, to know the truths of my faith more clearly, and to grow in my love for you.
Encountering Christ:
1. A Faulty Conclusion: The disciples had just seen Jesus heal the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman and the deaf man (Mark 7:24-37). They had just seen Jesus feed four thousand people with seven loaves and a few fish (Mark 8:1-9). Yet the disciples still couldn’t put Jesus’ words about leaven into context. They concluded that he was worried about them having only one loaf of bread with them! The Pharisees had just demanded a sign from Jesus (Mark 8:11), and now his own disciples didn’t understand him. Is it any wonder that Jesus sounded frustrated as he asked the disciples this series of questions? In our own lives, how easily we can become focused on our material concerns and our practical understanding and forget to try to see a situation through God’s eyes. We can struggle with a particular teaching of the Church, and rather than make the effort to form our conscience according to the mind of the Church through study, prayer, spiritual direction, and confession, we simply say that we disagree and leave it at that. We can fail to trust God, and our hearts become hardened into a particular expectation of how a problem should be solved. What would we say if Jesus asked, “Are your hearts hardened?”
2. Remember: The disciples seemed to have forgotten all they had seen and experienced with the Lord, and so Jesus asked, “And do you not remember…?” They had seen him quiet storms; raise Jarius’s daughter; heal lepers, the blind, and the deaf; and cast out demons as well as feeding thousands with virtually nothing. They had heard his teaching, and he had explained it to them. Nevertheless, they failed to see and hear as Jesus does. In our own lives, we can forget all that God has done to protect and guide us, we can forget all he has given us and how he has healed us. We can forget the ways in which we have seen him work in the lives of others. We need to stop and recall that, “Our help is in the name of the Lord, the maker of Heaven and earth” (Psalm 124:8) so that our “faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5).
3. Leaven: There are different types of leavening used in baking, but they all have one thing in common: they make dough or batter rise or expand. The Pharisees tried to test Jesus, demanded signs from him, and tried to turn the crowds against him. Their concern for their position, their way of understanding their faith, and their pride coalesced into disbelieving hardness of heart that affected those around them. Herod provided a scandalous example through his disordered life. Their leaven was to draw people away from Christ’s message. As Christians, we are called to be the leaven that enriches society with the Gospel. Jesus said, “To what shall I compare the Kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of wheat flour until the whole batch of dough was leavened” (Luke 13:20-21). We are called to bring about the Kingdom through our witness, in words and deeds: “The duty of Christians to take part in the life of the Church impels them to act as witnesses of the Gospel and of the obligations that flow from it. This witness is a transmission of faith in words and deeds. Witness is an act of justice that establishes the truth or makes it known” (CCC 2472).
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, it is so easy for me to think of my faith as private, just between the two of us. But that’s not true, is it? My faith either builds up or tears down the faith of others. It matters that I strive to know and live all that the Church teaches because it is really you teaching through your Church. It matters that I live with faith, hope, and love and so leaven my life with your grace. That way I can bring your light and love to others. Lord, only through your presence in my life, only through your Holy Spirit, do I have the strength to be your witness in the world. I thank you for your sacraments that strengthen me, and for your holy word that lets me encounter you in all you did and said in your life on earth. Lord, help me be good leaven in today’s world.
Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will prayerfully reflect on the witness of others in my life, and reach out to someone who has been a positive witness of the Gospel to let them know the impact he or she had on me.
REFLECTION
In the first reading from Genesis we are told that mankind had become so corrupt and evil that God decided to rid the earth of mankind. This is the frightening scenario of the great flood when only Noah, his family and animals in his ark were saved. How many men today would be pleasing in God's eyes, as Noah was pleasing to God in his time?
In the Gospel reading Jesus teaches us to see and hear the real message he was giving. Unlike the poor disciples who still did not see nor understand his miracle of multiplication of loaves and fishes, Jesus wants us to see his mission of conversion of heart. His miracles were to have people see that he had come to save mankind from evil, sinfulness and the effects of sin. His teaching and miracles were for them to see God's hand in their lives.
We pray for the grace of true conversion from our sinful ways and of genuine faith in Christ and his message of salvation.
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