Suy Niệm bài đọc thứ Ba tuần thứ 9 Thường Niên
Qua bài đọc thứ nhất hôm nay, chúng ta thấy bà con của ông Tôbit đã đau buồn, khổ sở vì một tai nạn không may đã xảy ra cho ông ta và làm ông ta phải chịu cảnh mù loà. Như câu chuyện ông Tôbit đã kể lại về vuộc đời của mình, chúng ta có thể chắc chắn là sẽ đặt câu một hỏi với Thiên Chúa một cách khắc nghiệt và cay cú: là tại sao Thiên Chúa đã để cho một người hết sức Đạo đức như Ông Tôbit đã phải chịu những sự khốn khó như thế…. chúng ta biết rằng ông ta thật là một người tốt bụng, biết kính sợ Thiên Chúa và yêu thương mọi người, đã đã không biêt mệt mỏi khi chôn cất những người bị giết hại ngoài đồng. Trước bị mù đôi mắt, ông đã làm những công việc bác ái không biết mệt mỏi, thế nhưng tại sao những điều xấu này lại xảy ra cho ông, một người tốt lành biết kính sợ Thiên Chúa?
(Như chúng ta được biết trong trong sách Tôbia, thì ông Tôbit là một Người Do Thái rất trung thành với Thiên Chúa, một trong những "người nghèo của Chúa", như là để nói rằng một trong những người bất chấp mọi thảm họa, nguy hiểm trong cuộc ông lưu vong vì chính trị và chiến tranh, những vẫn cực kỳ trung thành với Thiên Chúa. Thế nhưng ông Tobit đã không bao giờ thắc mắc, và phàn nàn với Thiên Chúa vì sự lưu vong, li tán gia đình hay thắc mắc về tai nạn và hậu quả đem đến sự mù loà, và tàn tật của chính mình.)
Lạy Chúa Giêsu, Chúa đang sống giữa chúng con, Chúa là niềm hy vọng và vinh quang của chúng con. Xin Chúa ban cho chúng con những ân sủng để chúng con tin rằng tất cả những gì xẩy đến cho chúng con sẽ được tốt đẹp, vì Chúa đã toàn thắng thế gian này.
Reflection SG
Many accidents happen in this world, some very minor, others more devastating. All of them call forth different reactions in human hearts and lives. People with a weaker faith or no faith at all, will often question why God allows such things to happen. Tobit’s kinsmen grieved at his blindness, the result of an unfortunate simple accident.
As Tobit recounts his story, we discover an element in it which would certainly make some people question God more harshly. He tells us that he was fatigued from burying the dead. He was obviously a good man, engaged, just before the accident to his eyes, in doing works of charity. Why do bad things happen to good people? Tobit was a faithful Jew, one of “the poor of the Lord”, that is to say one of those, who in spite of the great disaster of being in exile because of Middle-East politics and warfare, remained extraordinarily faithful to God.
As Tobit did not question God over the exile, so he did not question God over his own accident and his consequent disability. Let us learn from Tobit to place all our hope in God.
Lord Jesus, you are alive in our midst, our hope of glory. Grant us the grace to believe that all will be well, for you have overcome the world.
Tuesday 9th
Ordinary time 2023
“Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” Mark 12:14–15
These Pharisees and Herodians were sent to trap Jesus in His speech. These men were very politically minded and loved to pick sides and find fault with others. They were self-righteous and cared little about the salvation of souls. So they came to Jesus with what appeared to be an innocent question. They appear to presume that Jesus would voice opposition to paying the census tax to Caesar, and, if He did, they were ready to report Him to the civil authorities. They didn’t care about the truth; they only cared about trapping our divine Lord. When they brought the Roman coin to Jesus with the image of Caesar on it, Jesus spoke that profoundly wise line, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
Clearly, if these hypocritical religious leaders would have come to Jesus with humility and sincerity, Jesus would have responded to them much differently. But because they came only to trap, twist and destroy our Lord, Jesus puts them in their place with an act of divine wisdom. He doesn’t show support for paying the census tax, nor does He speak against it. Therefore, this Gospel passage ends with the line: “They were utterly amazed at him.” “Amazement” is the right response. Therefore, in a sense, we can learn from these hypocritical religious leaders. Whenever we come face-to-face with the profound wisdom of God, we should experience awe and holy amazement.
Of course, the amazement they experienced was on account of Jesus thwarting their evil trap. But even though that is the case, we can learn from this that the wisdom of God can never be outdone. God’s wisdom silences the foolishness of the age and reveals the hidden malice behind that evil.
Have you ever been confronted by the trickery of the secular “know-it-alls” of our age. Have you ever been challenged by another, had your faith directly attacked, or your moral convictions called into question? Most likely, if you have chosen to live your faith openly and with confidence, you may have felt the attack of another. For those who lack a deep faith and a clear gift of divine wisdom, such trickery can cause confusion and anxiety. You may find you do not know how to respond and feel trapped by the erroneous “wisdom” of the age. In that case, what do you do? The only answer to the false doctrines and deceptions we will all encounter within the growingly secular and atheist world is the answer that comes from divine wisdom. By ourselves, none of us is wise enough to combat these errors. Therefore, our only recourse is to continually turn to the wisdom of God.
We turn to the wisdom of God through prayer and sacred study. Our prayer opens our minds to the clear voice of God Who speaks pure truth. And sacred study, especially of the Scripture, the teachings of the Church and the lives of the saints, will help to clarify God’s voice and dispel the confusion the world tries to throw at us. In the end, if we are not immersing our minds in the true wisdom of God, we will be unprepared for that which we encounter within the world.
Reflect, today, upon your need to be filled with divine wisdom so as to navigate the trickery and foolishness of the world. Acknowledge that you are not wise enough on your own to cut through the confusion of life. Pray for the gift of wisdom and allow our Lord to bestow it upon you.
Lord of all Truth, You are wise beyond all worldly wisdom, and You thwart the trickery of the evil one. Open my mind, dear Lord, to Your holy Truth so that I may be able to navigate through the challenges of life. Bestow Your wisdom upon me, dear Lord, so that I may follow You wherever You lead. Jesus, I trust in You.
Tuesday 9th
Ordinary time 2023
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I come before you humbly. As one who has frequently fallen into sin, I know my weakness. Your great love assures me that your grace can keep me on the path to holiness.
Tuesday 9th
Ordinary time
Opening Prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, I thank you for the grace of coming before you in prayer. I thank you for the faith that has made me desire to pray, but I also ask you to increase my faith. May my contact with your word help me to rely ever more deeply on you and less on my own strength. Please open my mind and heart to hear what you wish to tell me.
Encountering Christ:
1. Knowing Their Hypocrisy: The Pharisees called Jesus a good teacher, but they had no desire to learn. The Pharisees and the Herodians were laying a trap for Jesus—and a clever one it was. If Jesus affirmed that they should pay the Roman tax, he would lose the favor of the people who resented Roman rule. If he declared it unnecessary to pay the tax, they could accuse him before the Romans of being an insurrectionist. Either answer would serve their purpose of undermining Jesus’s message. Their flattery was insulting. However, their indifference to truth was the real tragedy. If we want to encounter Jesus and learn from him, we must approach him with a sincere heart.
REFLECTION
Think of our national, local, community, family and personal problems today. They often result from not giving to God what is God's. The bitterness, prejudice, hatreds and injustices all around us are the overgrowth of our pride and greed, the rejection of God's law in our daily living. It is the Lord, and he only, who can solve these
dilemmas, who can teach us the way to go, who speaks most powerfully to us through his own example. The power to cure our ills is offered to us. The power over evil is given to us, but we do not accept it. We do not give to God what is God's. We do not really let the Lord fill us with his power. We put all kinds of obstacles in his way, just as the Pharisees did. We try to find easy substitutes for Christ, but they do not work. The saints, who gave to God what is God's, spent hours daily listening to him, in prayer, in studying the Gospel of Jesus with the inner heart, in following his example carefully.
God asks for a service which is freely given, and which never lessens, no matter what. Yes, no matter what, we must keep our trust in God and remain faithful to him in bad times as well as in good. Jesus is the only answer to all our problems. So let us turn to him for guidance and strength every single day of our lives.
REFLECTION
Taxation of the Jewish people by the Roman colonizer-state was a burning issue among the Jews of Jesus' day. The Pharisees were bitterly opposed to taxation by Rome and they bring the subject up to Jesus.
Jesus points out to the Pharisees that the coin bears the head of the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar. "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar," he tells the Pharisees, "and to God what belongs to God." He's telling them in effect: The Romans are here because originally you invited them. You've benefited from their protection and rule and peace. You use their coinage. You have an obligation to pay taxes to Rome.
Jesus' answer, however, is not absolute, in the sense that it's not applicable to all such situations. For example, a few years later it definitely would not be applicable. For the Roman emperors would begin to think of themselves as gods and would demand worship. Therefore, Christians could no longer give to the emperor what the emperor claimed. Giving to the emperor what belongs to him does not therefore mean that Christians should isolate their political and civic lives from their faith.
Every political act has a moral dimension. The Christian has to judge the morality of these acts.
tuesday 9th Week in Ordinary Time, Y-1
In today’s Gospel, Jesus escapes from a trap with one of his most famous one-liners: “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” We should not read this as though there is a clearly-demarcated political realm that belongs to the Caesars of the world, and a clearly-demarcated spiritual realm that belongs to God. And we certainly shouldn’t read it in the modern mode—that the public arena belongs to politics, while religion is relegated to the private dimension.
No, this won’t do, precisely because God is God. He’s not a being in or above the world, nor one reality among many. God is the sheer act of being itself, which necessarily pervades, influences, grounds, and has to do with everything, even as he transcends everything in creation.
God is the deepest source for everything in life from sports to law to the arts to science and to medicine. What has seized the lawyer (at his best) is a deep passion for justice, and God is justice itself; what has seized the doctor (at his best) is a deep passion for alleviating suffering, and God is love itself. Everything comes from God and returns to God.
Qua bài đọc thứ nhất hôm nay, chúng ta thấy bà con của ông Tôbit đã đau buồn, khổ sở vì một tai nạn không may đã xảy ra cho ông ta và làm ông ta phải chịu cảnh mù loà. Như câu chuyện ông Tôbit đã kể lại về vuộc đời của mình, chúng ta có thể chắc chắn là sẽ đặt câu một hỏi với Thiên Chúa một cách khắc nghiệt và cay cú: là tại sao Thiên Chúa đã để cho một người hết sức Đạo đức như Ông Tôbit đã phải chịu những sự khốn khó như thế…. chúng ta biết rằng ông ta thật là một người tốt bụng, biết kính sợ Thiên Chúa và yêu thương mọi người, đã đã không biêt mệt mỏi khi chôn cất những người bị giết hại ngoài đồng. Trước bị mù đôi mắt, ông đã làm những công việc bác ái không biết mệt mỏi, thế nhưng tại sao những điều xấu này lại xảy ra cho ông, một người tốt lành biết kính sợ Thiên Chúa?
(Như chúng ta được biết trong trong sách Tôbia, thì ông Tôbit là một Người Do Thái rất trung thành với Thiên Chúa, một trong những "người nghèo của Chúa", như là để nói rằng một trong những người bất chấp mọi thảm họa, nguy hiểm trong cuộc ông lưu vong vì chính trị và chiến tranh, những vẫn cực kỳ trung thành với Thiên Chúa. Thế nhưng ông Tobit đã không bao giờ thắc mắc, và phàn nàn với Thiên Chúa vì sự lưu vong, li tán gia đình hay thắc mắc về tai nạn và hậu quả đem đến sự mù loà, và tàn tật của chính mình.)
Lạy Chúa Giêsu, Chúa đang sống giữa chúng con, Chúa là niềm hy vọng và vinh quang của chúng con. Xin Chúa ban cho chúng con những ân sủng để chúng con tin rằng tất cả những gì xẩy đến cho chúng con sẽ được tốt đẹp, vì Chúa đã toàn thắng thế gian này.
Many accidents happen in this world, some very minor, others more devastating. All of them call forth different reactions in human hearts and lives. People with a weaker faith or no faith at all, will often question why God allows such things to happen. Tobit’s kinsmen grieved at his blindness, the result of an unfortunate simple accident.
As Tobit recounts his story, we discover an element in it which would certainly make some people question God more harshly. He tells us that he was fatigued from burying the dead. He was obviously a good man, engaged, just before the accident to his eyes, in doing works of charity. Why do bad things happen to good people? Tobit was a faithful Jew, one of “the poor of the Lord”, that is to say one of those, who in spite of the great disaster of being in exile because of Middle-East politics and warfare, remained extraordinarily faithful to God.
As Tobit did not question God over the exile, so he did not question God over his own accident and his consequent disability. Let us learn from Tobit to place all our hope in God.
Lord Jesus, you are alive in our midst, our hope of glory. Grant us the grace to believe that all will be well, for you have overcome the world.
“Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” Mark 12:14–15
These Pharisees and Herodians were sent to trap Jesus in His speech. These men were very politically minded and loved to pick sides and find fault with others. They were self-righteous and cared little about the salvation of souls. So they came to Jesus with what appeared to be an innocent question. They appear to presume that Jesus would voice opposition to paying the census tax to Caesar, and, if He did, they were ready to report Him to the civil authorities. They didn’t care about the truth; they only cared about trapping our divine Lord. When they brought the Roman coin to Jesus with the image of Caesar on it, Jesus spoke that profoundly wise line, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.”
Clearly, if these hypocritical religious leaders would have come to Jesus with humility and sincerity, Jesus would have responded to them much differently. But because they came only to trap, twist and destroy our Lord, Jesus puts them in their place with an act of divine wisdom. He doesn’t show support for paying the census tax, nor does He speak against it. Therefore, this Gospel passage ends with the line: “They were utterly amazed at him.” “Amazement” is the right response. Therefore, in a sense, we can learn from these hypocritical religious leaders. Whenever we come face-to-face with the profound wisdom of God, we should experience awe and holy amazement.
Of course, the amazement they experienced was on account of Jesus thwarting their evil trap. But even though that is the case, we can learn from this that the wisdom of God can never be outdone. God’s wisdom silences the foolishness of the age and reveals the hidden malice behind that evil.
Have you ever been confronted by the trickery of the secular “know-it-alls” of our age. Have you ever been challenged by another, had your faith directly attacked, or your moral convictions called into question? Most likely, if you have chosen to live your faith openly and with confidence, you may have felt the attack of another. For those who lack a deep faith and a clear gift of divine wisdom, such trickery can cause confusion and anxiety. You may find you do not know how to respond and feel trapped by the erroneous “wisdom” of the age. In that case, what do you do? The only answer to the false doctrines and deceptions we will all encounter within the growingly secular and atheist world is the answer that comes from divine wisdom. By ourselves, none of us is wise enough to combat these errors. Therefore, our only recourse is to continually turn to the wisdom of God.
We turn to the wisdom of God through prayer and sacred study. Our prayer opens our minds to the clear voice of God Who speaks pure truth. And sacred study, especially of the Scripture, the teachings of the Church and the lives of the saints, will help to clarify God’s voice and dispel the confusion the world tries to throw at us. In the end, if we are not immersing our minds in the true wisdom of God, we will be unprepared for that which we encounter within the world.
Reflect, today, upon your need to be filled with divine wisdom so as to navigate the trickery and foolishness of the world. Acknowledge that you are not wise enough on your own to cut through the confusion of life. Pray for the gift of wisdom and allow our Lord to bestow it upon you.
Lord of all Truth, You are wise beyond all worldly wisdom, and You thwart the trickery of the evil one. Open my mind, dear Lord, to Your holy Truth so that I may be able to navigate through the challenges of life. Bestow Your wisdom upon me, dear Lord, so that I may follow You wherever You lead. Jesus, I trust in You.
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I come before you humbly. As one who has frequently fallen into sin, I know my weakness. Your great love assures me that your grace can keep me on the path to holiness.
Opening Prayer:
Dear Lord Jesus, I thank you for the grace of coming before you in prayer. I thank you for the faith that has made me desire to pray, but I also ask you to increase my faith. May my contact with your word help me to rely ever more deeply on you and less on my own strength. Please open my mind and heart to hear what you wish to tell me.
Encountering Christ:
1. Knowing Their Hypocrisy: The Pharisees called Jesus a good teacher, but they had no desire to learn. The Pharisees and the Herodians were laying a trap for Jesus—and a clever one it was. If Jesus affirmed that they should pay the Roman tax, he would lose the favor of the people who resented Roman rule. If he declared it unnecessary to pay the tax, they could accuse him before the Romans of being an insurrectionist. Either answer would serve their purpose of undermining Jesus’s message. Their flattery was insulting. However, their indifference to truth was the real tragedy. If we want to encounter Jesus and learn from him, we must approach him with a sincere heart.
Think of our national, local, community, family and personal problems today. They often result from not giving to God what is God's. The bitterness, prejudice, hatreds and injustices all around us are the overgrowth of our pride and greed, the rejection of God's law in our daily living. It is the Lord, and he only, who can solve these
dilemmas, who can teach us the way to go, who speaks most powerfully to us through his own example. The power to cure our ills is offered to us. The power over evil is given to us, but we do not accept it. We do not give to God what is God's. We do not really let the Lord fill us with his power. We put all kinds of obstacles in his way, just as the Pharisees did. We try to find easy substitutes for Christ, but they do not work. The saints, who gave to God what is God's, spent hours daily listening to him, in prayer, in studying the Gospel of Jesus with the inner heart, in following his example carefully.
God asks for a service which is freely given, and which never lessens, no matter what. Yes, no matter what, we must keep our trust in God and remain faithful to him in bad times as well as in good. Jesus is the only answer to all our problems. So let us turn to him for guidance and strength every single day of our lives.
Taxation of the Jewish people by the Roman colonizer-state was a burning issue among the Jews of Jesus' day. The Pharisees were bitterly opposed to taxation by Rome and they bring the subject up to Jesus.
Jesus points out to the Pharisees that the coin bears the head of the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar. "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar," he tells the Pharisees, "and to God what belongs to God." He's telling them in effect: The Romans are here because originally you invited them. You've benefited from their protection and rule and peace. You use their coinage. You have an obligation to pay taxes to Rome.
Jesus' answer, however, is not absolute, in the sense that it's not applicable to all such situations. For example, a few years later it definitely would not be applicable. For the Roman emperors would begin to think of themselves as gods and would demand worship. Therefore, Christians could no longer give to the emperor what the emperor claimed. Giving to the emperor what belongs to him does not therefore mean that Christians should isolate their political and civic lives from their faith.
Every political act has a moral dimension. The Christian has to judge the morality of these acts.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus escapes from a trap with one of his most famous one-liners: “Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” We should not read this as though there is a clearly-demarcated political realm that belongs to the Caesars of the world, and a clearly-demarcated spiritual realm that belongs to God. And we certainly shouldn’t read it in the modern mode—that the public arena belongs to politics, while religion is relegated to the private dimension.
No, this won’t do, precisely because God is God. He’s not a being in or above the world, nor one reality among many. God is the sheer act of being itself, which necessarily pervades, influences, grounds, and has to do with everything, even as he transcends everything in creation.
God is the deepest source for everything in life from sports to law to the arts to science and to medicine. What has seized the lawyer (at his best) is a deep passion for justice, and God is justice itself; what has seized the doctor (at his best) is a deep passion for alleviating suffering, and God is love itself. Everything comes from God and returns to God.
No comments:
Post a Comment