Today's Gospel

Repair Your Relationships

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. In our exploration of the genius of the Gospel, today's reading comes from the Gospel of Matthew 5:20-26. "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard that it was said to the men of old, you shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says, you fool shall be liable to hell of fire. So if you are offering your gift at the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first and be reconciled with your brother and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court. Lest your accuser hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny."

What jumps out at you today? Is there a relationship in your life that is fractured, that is broken, that needs work, that needs attention. Jesus is saying it's easy to spend time with God sometimes and difficult to spend time with people. Jesus is saying there is an order to these things and to repair your relationship with your brother before you come to the altar. And I think that's a great challenge for many of us because I think we all have relationships that need improving. We all have relationships that get fractured from time to time, that are broken, that need reconciliation, that need forgiveness. We need to forgive others, others need to forgive us. And we can get comfortable avoiding those reconciliations. And Jesus today is saying, take care of it. Take care of it.

So who is it in your life that you need to reach out to today? Maybe you need to reconcile with them. Maybe you need to forgive them. Maybe you need to ask for their forgiveness. Maybe you just need to reach out to somebody who lost touch with someone. Reach out to someone today, even if it's uncomfortable. Have the difficult conversation that you know you need to have. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic. I hope you're enjoying the Daily Gospel Reflections. So one of the things I love doing, spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I encourage you to do that today.