Suy Niệm bài đọc Thứ Ba Tuần thứ 28 Thường Niên

Suy Niệm bài đọc Thứ Ba Tuần thứ 28 Thường Niên

Trong bài đọc thứ Nhất hôm nay, Thánh Phaolô nhắc nhở Giáo Đoàn Rôma rằng họ được cứu bởi vì họ có niềm tin vào Chúa Kitô và Tin Mừng. Thánh Phao lô cũng nói rằng chúng ta biết được Thiên Chúa là do bởi những công trình mà Chúa đã tạo ra trong thế giớ và trong cuộc sống của chúng ta..

Trong bài Tin Mừnh, Chúa Giêsu đã khiển trách những người Pharisêu vì lòng đạo đức giả của họ, họ thờ phượng Thiên Cha bằng môi miệng trong nhiều quy tắc: họ có hàng đống luật lệ như nhỡng toa thuốc vô tận về sự thanh tẩy và sự sạch sẽ của họ với những nghi thức bề ngoài như việc chuẩn bị thức ăn và cách ăn uống. Tuy nhiên, lòng của họ thì "đầy tham lam và ác độc."

Điều quan trọng thực sự chính là những gì chúng ta đang làm bằng tất cả trái tim, lòng nhiệt huyết và cuộc sống của chúng ta.

Lạy Chúa, xin giúp chúng con hiểu biết về Chúa nhiều ơn thêm và có ược tấm lòng quảng ại và từ bi. Xin Chúa giúp chúng con lạy Chúa, đừng bao giờ để con đi tìm lỗi của người khác nhưng giúp chúng biết yêu thương lại. Xin Chúa giúp chúng con biết thông cảm và không xét đoán người khác trong động cơ và hành động của họ. Xin Chúa dạy chúng con biết khiêm tốn và rộng lượng.

REFLECTION

In the first reading Paul reminds the Church in Rome that they are saved by their belief in Christ and the Good News. Paul also says that we know God from his works, the world he had created.

In the Gospel reading Jesus reprimands the Pharisees for their hypocrisy in their many rules: they have endless prescriptions about ritual purity and cleanliness, about preparing food and eating. Yet they are "full of greed and evil." What is truly important is what we are in our hearts and inmost being.

Lord, help me to become more understanding and compassionate. Help me, Lord, not to be a fault-finder but a loving person instead. Help me to be discerning and yet not judgmental of others in their motives and actions. Teach me to be humble and generous.

Reflection Tuesday 28th Ordinary 2022

Opening Prayer: I praise and I thank you Father for sending your Son, Jesus, to save me. Praying with Psalm 119, I beg you “Let your mercy come to me, O Lord, your salvation according to your promise. Take not the word of truth from my mouth, for in your ordinances is my hope. And I will keep your law continually, forever and ever. And I will walk at liberty, because I seek your precepts. And I will delight in your commands, which I love. And I will lift up my hands to your commands and meditate on your statutes.”

Encountering Christ:

1. Inviting God In: “After Jesus had spoken, a Pharisee invited him to dine at his home.” Since Abraham welcomed the three strangers, as described in Genesis (18:1-8), hospitality has been woven into the faith and culture of the Jewish people. Jewish tradition considers it “mitzvah,” meaning commandment. It is said when one knows of strangers who are hungry or need a place to relax, it becomes a legal obligation. For this Pharisee, inviting Jesus to dine in his home also meant inviting all those traveling with Jesus. It also included many dishes, many courses, and long conversations. It was not a small thing for this Pharisee to open his home to Jesus. Was his intention purely hospitality? Do we invite God into our life because we think we are supposed to? Because we will be punished if we do not? Or do we want to speak more personally with God? It is a question we need to ask ourselves honestly. May we seek the Lord with the purest of intentions.

2. Scrutinizing Jesus: “He [Jesus] entered and reclined at table to eat. The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before the meal.” It seems by this verse that the Pharisee had an intention other than being hospitable. He was using this occasion to scrutinize and judge Jesus. We do not read that the Pharisee spoke at all. It was to the Pharisee’s critical thoughts Jesus responded, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil. You fools!” What does this tell us about Jesus? It tells us that he knows what we are thinking, and that he despises duplicity. We have encountered this elsewhere in Scripture. Before Nathaniel even spoke, Jesus complimented his future Apostle saying, “There is no duplicity in him” (John 1:47). He also spoke against the sin of duplicity saying, “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37). We can let this exchange between Jesus and the Pharisee be an opportunity for self-examination of our personal integrity. God welcomes our honest questions about what we do not understand in our faith. However, if we criticize Church teachings to prove ourselves right, we are behaving like this Pharisee.

3. Considering Our Maker: “Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside? But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.” Even in admonishment, God is Love, always providing a way out of spiritual bondage to sin. He is always working to free us from what keeps us from him. Jesus counseled the Pharisee to make reparation for his duplicity by acts of charity. If done with purity of intention, acts of charity can cleanse us from all that keeps us from living as authentic followers of Jesus. St. Faustina wrote of purity of intention in her Diary of Divine Mercy (1566), “When I was apologizing to the Lord Jesus for a certain action of mine which, a little later, turned out to be imperfect, Jesus put me at ease with these words: ‘My daughter, I reward you for the purity of your intention which you had at the time when you acted. My Heart rejoiced that you had my love under consideration when you acted, and that in so distinct a way; and even now you still derive benefit from this; that is, from the humiliation. Yes, my child, I want you to always have such great purity of intention in the very least things you undertake.’”

Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, I want to be a genuine person, authentic in my thoughts and actions. I want there to be no reason for you to admonish me for my duplicity. But I know that I sometimes fool myself. Thank you for the gift of the sacrament of Reconciliation so I can repent of my sins and be made whole.

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will perform an act of charity with purity of intention.

Tuesday 28th Ordinary Time

Opening Prayer: You have given me this new day, Lord. You have given it as a fresh chance to know you better, to love you better, to follow you better. I turn to you right now so as to give you praise by listening to your word, and so as to receive the grace I need to battle for your Kingdom joyfully.

Encountering Christ:

· The Essence of Christianity: Jesus and the Pharisees were always getting into scrapes. The Pharisees were the religious leaders in Israel at the time of Christ. They were the ones who knew the divine law best, and who had made a radical decision to follow it even in the minutest details. Their desire to be pure and exemplary was a good desire, but unfortunately, it had led them to a place of spiritual pride, of spiritual self-sufficiency. They believed that entering into a right relationship with God required above all external obedience to certain ritualistic norms (like the washings St. Luke refers to in this passage). By following those norms perfectly, they considered themselves in a perfect relationship with God. This made many of them deaf to Christ’s message because the essence of Christ’s message was not about obedience to norms, but about relationship. For Jesus, the numerous ritualistic ordinances of the Old Testament are all summarized in his two great commandments of loving God and loving neighbor. Love is a relational virtue, not a ritualistic virtue. Certainly rituals–like certain vocal prayers, or like the sacraments–can contribute mightily and objectively to the health of our relationship with God, but without our hearts engaged honestly and affectionately with the real person of Jesus, we will simply miss the spiritual boat.

· A Solid Pharisaical Insight: One thing the Pharisees understood better than most Christians in our day and age was the importance of purification from sin. In fact, throughout the Gospels, and the whole New Testament, really, Jesus is continually calling us to repentance, to a turning away from the lusts and greed and sloth of our fallen human nature in order to welcome his mercy and his transforming grace. Many of the Pharisees’ rituals were directed towards purifications, toward putting themselves in a state in which they would be in harmony with God’s own desires and so be open to receiving God’s saving grace. This is a healthy attitude for all of us. Even though we have been wounded by original sin, we are still capable of turning our lives toward God or away from God. But this turning doesn’t happen primarily through external rituals, as the Pharisees thought, but through our moral choices. This is why Jesus says that giving alms is a path to interior purification. Giving alms is a term used to refer to any sincere act of love towards our neighbors who are in need. Those acts turn our hearts toward God; they put our hearts in harmony with God’s own heart, which is a heart burning with infinite love. When, on the other hand, we willingly turn away from our neighbor in need, we turn our hearts away from God’s heart, closing ourselves off from receiving his light and his grace.

· Obedience and Peace: The liturgical calendar for today remembers St. John XIII, the pope who called the Second Vatican Council. His motto as bishop, and later as pope, was three words in Latin: obediencia et pax, obedience and peace. The path to interior peace is obedience to God’s will. This motto reminds us of Jesus’s own phrase given to us in the Our Father: Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done. Christ’s Kingdom is a Kingdom of peace, joy, and meaning. And making that Kingdom present in our lives and the lives of those around us requires nothing more than living in obedience to the law of the King—to the commandments, the beatitudes, the teaching and example of Christ and his Church. In our secular world, this praise for the virtue of obedience may strike a discordant note. The postmodernism of today’s culture minimizes a humble recognition of objective truth and maximizes an arrogant embrace of subjective autonomy. It encourages us to create our own meaning as if human nature were not something we had received. The invitation to invent our own meaning appeals to our fallen nature, within which there always lurks a desire to be godlike, unlimited by the parameters of creaturehood and finitude. But whether we accept them or not, those parameters are real. We can no more disobey the objective moral order and expect to be morally satisfied than we can disobey the laws of biology and expect to be physically healthy. Let us learn from today’s saint, and give obedience to God’s will its proper place in our lives so that we experience the peace–of conscience, of soul, and of mind–that God wants for us.

Conversing with Christ: Dear Lord, you were the freest, most balanced person who ever walked this earth. I want to share in your freedom, to experience the peace that comes from living fully in your love. But I need your help. I am just like the Pharisees: I want to control everything and have absolute clarity once and for all. Instead, you invite me to live in the dynamism of discipleship, following you day by day and gradually discovering more and more of your goodness and truth. That journey takes trust and faith. Increase my faith and my trust, Lord; free me from the narrow confines of my insecurities and arrogance.

Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will make a point of reaching out to someone in need, “giving alms” as Jesus admonishes.

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Introductory Prayer: Lord, I believe you are present here as I turn to you in prayer. I trust and have confidence in your desire to give me every grace I need to receive today. Thank you for your love. Thank you for your immense generosity toward me. I give you my life and my love in return.

Petition: Lord, you call me not just to a conversion of exterior actions and ways of living, but to a conversion of heart, a conversion of always loving more. Grant me this grace of conversion.

Encountering Christ:

1. Law for the Law’s Sake: The Pharisees placed great emphasis on fulfilling the Mosaic Law down to its last iota. They also had many more customs and regulations to ensure that they were adequately fulfilling the Law—layer upon layer of laws to enforce laws. Their mental checklist of laws fulfilled and regulations completed was impressive and a source of pride and satisfaction that they were living as they were supposed to. But they were missing the point. The Mosaic Law was intended to free them for worship, delivering them from slavery to pagan gods and from slavery to sin. When the Law (and the added customs and regulations) became an end in itself, it was truncated and severed from the One to whom it was meant to lead. Today in the Catholic Church, there are enough laws, customs, and regulations to make even the most rigorous Pharisee proud. The danger is that we can fall into one of two traps. First, we can adhere to them with such vigor that we lose sight of the One they are freeing us to worship. We don’t allow our hearts and minds to be educated and formed by them; we just follow them blindly. We wind up cleaning the outside of the cup and stopping there, without going on to see God’s love and let it purify our hearts.

2. The Second Trap: The second trap we can fall into is at the other extreme: to give ourselves an easy pass by presuming that “if my heart is in the right place, I don’t need to worry about all these rules and such.” With a lax attitude we permit ourselves to ease up on fulfilling these laws which in truth will free us. “I know today is Sunday and I should go to Mass, but it’s vacation! God knows I’m a good person.” Yet it is in the Sunday Mass that we receive the many graces necessary toward our being that “good person”. The commandment to keep the Sabbath holy, as with any of the Ten Commandments and customs of the Church, is there to lead us to God. These free us from our often confused, subjective conclusions about how we should worship God and live our lives.

3. Cleaning the Cup: “Charity covers a multitude of sin” (1 Peter 4:8). This is how St. Peter rephrased the words of Christ, “But as to what is within, give alms, and behold, everything will be clean for you.” The Law of love is the most important of all the commandments of the Lord. In Chapter 12 of the Gospel of Mark, Christ responds to a scribe’s question about the first of all the commandments: “The first is this: ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” Love of God and neighbor is both the source and the summit of the Law of the Old Covenant and of the New. Living these two greatest commandments purifies and cleanses our hearts—the inside of the cup. So, when Christ says to give alms, he is telling the Pharisees to love their neighbors. Then their hearts will be clean.

Conversation with Christ: Lord, I want my heart always to be focused on you. I need your guidance, for I can’t do it alone. I need you to teach me how to love you, how to worship and serve you. The laws you give me free me and guide me toward you. Help me to see your hand leading me ever closer to you.

Resolution: If there is a rule or custom of the Church that I don’t understand or don’t practice, I will read up on it to better understand how it frees me and guides me in my relationship with Christ.

REFLECTION Tuesday 28TH ORDINARY 2018

In the first reading Paul reminds all that "in Christ Jesus it is irrelevant whether we be circumcised or not: what matters is faith working through love." Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit the Church affirmed that all, Jews and Gentiles, were called to salvation through faith in Christ.

In the Gospel reading Jesus reprimands the Pharisees for their hypocrisy in their many rules: they have endless prescriptions about ritual purity and cleanliness, about preparing food and eating. Yet they are "full of greed and evil."

At times we too could be like the Pharisees, quick to judge others while we ignore our own failures and imperfections. I am reminded of a woman who from her kitchen window saw her neighbor's laundry hanging to dry in the yard. The woman was critical that her laundry was not properly cleaned and washed.

One day she was surprised to see the neighbor's laundry looking clean and spotless. She told her husband, "Finally, our neighbor has learned to wash her laundry properly." Her husband said, "You did not notice? Yesterday I found time to clean our kitchen windows."

Lord, help me to become more understanding of others. Help me, Lord, not to be a fault-finder but a loving person instead. Help me to be discerning and yet not judgmental of others in their motives and actions. Teach me to be humble and generous.

Tuesday 28TH ORDINARY

Đối với Thiên Chúa điều nào quan trọng hơn, bàn tay sạch bế ngoài hay cái sạch từ bên trong, trong tâm hồn của chúng ta. Trong bài Tin Mừng hôm nay, Chúa Giêsu quở trách những người Pha-ri-si đã chấp chứa những tư tưởng xấu xa mà làm cho ô uế cả tâm linh, như tham lam, kiêu ngạo, ghen ghét, hờn dận, tự kiêu, và ham muốn vật chất. Chúa Giêsu dạy chúng ta tha thứ là một việc bác ái tự đến từ tấm lòng nhân hậu, thuơng yêu. Có những người trong như có vẻ bề ngoài, phô trương nhưng đó chỉ là những thứ giả hình, mà không phải thật sự. Có những thứ giả hình nhìn bề ngoài chúng ta không thể nhận ra, nhưng nếu nhận xét từ bên trong lòng họ đầy những giả dối . Họ cố chấp và không bao giờ biết tha thứ. Do đó, họ không bao giờ tha thứ cho người khác. Tâm hồn chúng ta vẫn còn nặng thù hận, cố chấp, chưa biết tha thứ là được bắt nguồn từ những thói quen của chúng ta tự cho mình là trung tâm của vũ trụ. Khi chúng ta không thể nghĩ xa hơn chính chúng ta, chúng ta không

Reflection Luke 11:37-41

Which is more important to God? Clean hands or a clean mind and heart? In the Gospel reading today, Jesus chided the Pharisees for harboring evil thoughts that make us unclean spiritually such as greed, pride, bitterness, envy, arrogance, and the like.

Jesus didn’t care much for what people might say or what is politically correct, whether we like it or not. These are not criteria on which Christians should base their decisions. Jesus clearly condemns double morality, which clearly seeks convenience or deception, as He said in Gospel: “you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside yourselves you are full of greed and evil. Fools” (Lk 11:39).

God's word, as usual, questions us about customs and habits of our daily life, when we end up converting trivia into “values”, to disguise our sins of arrogance, selfishness and conceit, while attempting to “globalize” morals with political correction in order to avoid being out of tune or being marginalized.

There is time our hearts are still bitter and heavy, tempt us want to revenge rather than forgive.

- Un-forgiveness is rooted in our habit of thinking self-centered thoughts.

- When we cannot think beyond ourselves we cannot forgive.

When we freely give and give generously to those in need we express love, compassion, kindness, and mercy. And if our heart is full of love and compassion, then there is no room for envy, greed, bitterness, and the like. Let us allow God's love to transform our heart, mind, and actions toward our neighbors and others.