Today's Gospel

Escape the Comparison Game

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant. I'm Matthew Kelly. Each day, we're taking a look at the gospel of the day. We're looking for a word or phrase or an idea to anchor our life that day in that word phrase, or idea, and by extension, to anchor our life in the Gospel. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Matthew 9:14-17.

"Then the disciples of John came to him saying, 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?' And Jesus said to them, 'Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast. And no one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch tears away from the garment, and a worse tear is made. Neither is a new wine put into old wineskins. If it is, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skin's destroyed. But new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved.'"

What jumps out at you today? What jumps out at me is something here. I've probably read this a 100 times, but something I've never really thought about, and that is so the disciples of John the Baptist come to Jesus and said, "Hey, Jesus, why are we fasting? Why are the Pharisees fasting? And your disciples are not fasting." And so the colossal mistake they've made, and I can't believe I haven't seen this before now, is that they're comparing themselves to other people. And we make the mistake ourselves. We make a mistake all the time. It is a trap. We start comparing ourselves to other people. We're down a path. We're down a path that is going to lead to dissatisfaction. We're down a path that is going to lead us away from the one path that we are called to walk. Comparing ourselves to other people is a dangerous mistake. It undermines our spiritual growth. We've got to be on the watch for it, got to be on the watch for it. Who are you comparing yourself to at the moment? And how do you set that down? How do you lay that down and walk away from those comparisons? Have an amazing day. Remember, do not just be yourself, be the very best version of yourself, all that God created you to be.