The Power of Your No
3 min
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Gospel
Mt 5: 33-37
“Again you have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
Readings are from Dynamic Catholic’s New Testament Bible: RSV Catholic Edition
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Transcript
The Power of Your No
Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. I'm Matthew Kelly. Each day, we are reading the gospel of the day together. We're looking for a word, a phrase, or an idea that jumps out at us, that the Spirit draws our attention to so that we can reflect on that word, phrase, or idea today so that we can anchor our day in the gospel. Today's reading, short. It comes from the Gospel of Matthew 5:33-37, "Again, you have heard it said to the men of old, 'You shall not swear falsely but shall perform to the Lord what you have sworn.' But I say to you, 'Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great king. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let what you say be simple, yes or no. Anything more than this comes from evil.'" What jumps out at you today? What jumps out at me is that I think we often, probably all of us, find ourselves in a situation where we're saying yes to the wrong things, and we find ourselves in situations where we should be saying no, but for whatever reason, we don't. We know we should say no, but we don't. And so let's really focus in today on our yes and our no. What are we saying yes to? What are we agreeing to? What are we committing to? And what are we saying no to? What are we rejecting? What are we saying, "That's not for us."? And let our yes be a firm yes. Let our no be a firm no. With the understanding, because this, I think, is where we get into trouble, we are finite beings in a universe of almost infinite opportunity and possibility, you're going to have to say no to an awful lot of things, okay? In fact, you have to say no to almost everything. 99.9999999999999% of things we are saying no to. So this idea of missing out on something, you are going to miss out on almost everything. You miss out on the great majority of everything. So let's make sure we say yes to the right things because when we say yes to something, we're saying no to everything else. Have an amazing day. Remember, be bold, be Catholic.