Today's Gospel

Are You Brave Enough for This?

Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly. Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. I love this time we have together each day. A few minutes, reflect on the gospel, allow the Holy Spirit to speak in our lives so that we go out into the world and be a living witness to the word, be a living witness to the good news. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Matthew 17:14-20. When they came to the crowd, a man came up to him and kneeling before him said, "Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic, and he suffers terribly. For often, he falls into the fire and often into the water, and I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him." And Jesus answered, "Oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me." And Jesus rebuked him, and the demon came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus' privately and said, "Why could we not cast it out?" And Jesus said to them, "Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you if you had faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, move from here to yonder place and it will move and nothing will be impossible to you."

What is it that jumps out at you today? Is there a phrase? Is there an idea? Jesus could be perceived as a little bit grumpy here today. What does he say? He says, "Oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" Sounds like something we all might want to say from time to time to different people getting on our nerves, and it's beautiful, in a sense, because it shows Jesus' humanity. We're always, I think, tempted to look only at his divinity and to forget that he was going through real human stuff, and here, he's frustrated. Now, we get frustrated for lots of reasons, right? We get frustrated because we're impatient. It's not a virtue then.

When Jesus went into the temple, he got angry. It was really interesting because why did he get angry? He got angry because that was the most appropriate response to the situation. He didn't get angry out of impatience. He didn't get angry out of ego. He didn't get angry out of many of the reasons that we get angry. He got angry because being angry was the most appropriate response to the situation, and of course, here, he is naturally frustrated with people. Basically, how long I got to put up with this? I tell you every day. When are you going to hear me? When are you going to listen? And of course, if we will go there, if we have the courage to go there, we hear him speaking these words to us. We hear him saying to us, "Oh, faithless and perverse generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" And it's an invitation to change, right?

I mean, if you're frustrating your best friend in this way and you knew it, you would change your behavior, right? But we're frustrating God, and all in our own way, right? You got your own stubbornness with God. I got my own stubbornness with God. You've got whatever it is you're resisting that God's trying to you know nudge you towards. I got what I'm resisting, which God's trying to nudge me towards. We've all got it, right? And it's a natural human response to get frustrated with our stubbornness and our resistance. So today, let's let down the guard. Let's set the stubbornness aside. Let's set the assistance aside and whatever it is God's calling us to, let's say yes. Move ahead. Have a great day. Remember, don't just be yourself, be the-very-best-version-of-yourself, all that God created you to be.