Tuesday of 15th week, even numbered year
"Jesus began to reproach the towns in which most of his miracles had been worked, because they refused to repent.
’Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in try and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."
The mark of a true love is when we tell our suffering to our friend when we don’t understand his attitude that shocks us. Whoever loves with a sincere love shows his love by showing that what his brother lives is beyond our comprehension.
Acts speak and we need to answer them so as not to enter into a loss of love to which it would be hard to remedy.
Loved ones are always sending each other signs, messages, still they need to be deciphered. We cannot take the risk of no longer being able to open up to other people, to be no longer capable of loving them.
Jesus shows us the example through he marvels he gives us, they bring up thanksgiving in us, a thank you.
’Alas you’ is a cry from Jesus who is in a state of confidence when faced with our indifference : ’If you don’t hold on to me you won’t be able to hold on.’
If we love God’s gifts, we need to love even more and attach ourselves to the God of gifts. Our attachment is for the person of Jesus who gives life. And so we shall betroth the feelings of his heart and we shall be thirsty for love, justice and truth.
“And as for you, Capernaum, did you want to be raised as high as heaven? You shall be flung down to hell. For if the miracles done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have ben standing yet.”
Jesus went through the experience of being left by people from these small villages and towns, and he really does suffer from that.
God has showed significant signs of how much He loves and nobody responded to them. The calls to conversion Jesus makes reveals his expectations, he would like to see our response of faith in the God of the Covenant.
It is a matter of coming back to fidelity as a child of God, find once again the path to our own identity and the way of our own faith which brings consistence to our lives.
If we aren’t careful, without realising it we take hold of God’s gifts as if they belong to us and we no longer see that God is taking care of us. We receive as an obligation something which is given to us o abundantly. What is a gift of Love becomes something normal and so we lose fervour, wonderment and thanksgiving. We receive the befits from god as though we ’were not concerned with the Giver’.
Little by little, things ’slide away’ in our hearts. Instead of being the Father’s child who beholds everything given to him in wonder, we can become very blasé.
"Still, I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on Judgement Day than for you.
We admit we have in us a gap, a part of us that doesn’t take on our conditions as a child of God. We may have a hard time assuming our role of father towards one of our children, or not know how to maintain a friendly relationship with several people in our neighbourhood. Or else give up too easily our own dignity in order to keep the friendship of a group.
We receive the healing we need from the Word of Jesus who calls us to a real gift of Love which sets us free.
Let us draw from Jesus’ call the resource we need to jump up again, to be awoken, then let us open up to be converted.
This means for us to enter into the reciprocity of love which will be seen in how we love our neighbour.
Jesu tells us how much God loves us and how he also wants our heart to be close to his own Heart!
When our life is in harmony with the Heart of our Father, then we are happy in life. Jesus’ wish for us is that we take the gifts the Father has given us very seriously, he wants us to go and draw on the sources of his Love!
If he cries by these reproaches it is because his Heart is wounded seeing our indifference. When our heart is in a state of thanksgiving for the gifts of God in the secret of our heart and when we take care of the weak and poor, this is when our heart will be awoken!