Today's Gospel

Don’t Be a Fool

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we take a look at the gospel and give our day something to grasp, something of meaning, something of value, some wisdom, the Word of God to grasp onto so that we can not be just blowing around in our day, but actually have focus and direction. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke, 11:37-41. We've been working our way through chapter 11 of Luke for a few days here.

While Jesus was speaking, a Pharisee asked him to dine with him. So he went in and sat at a table. The Pharisee was astonished to see that Jesus did not first wash before dinner. And the Lord said to him, "Now you Pharisees cleanse the outside of the cup and of the dish. But inside you are full of extortion and wickedness. You fools. Did not he who made the outside make the inside also. But give for arms those things which are within and behold, everything is clean for you."

What jumps out at you today? What jumps out at me is Jesus calling these guys fools. We talked a few days ago about, if Jesus said you woe to you, and I'm going to put the fools thing up with that. If Jesus said to you, you fools, I think that would get your attention pretty quickly. And I can't help but think similarly to what we discussed a few days ago. And if Jesus was saying to me, "You fool Matthew, what would he be saying that to me about at this time in my life?" I think we can look back at different times in our lives and realize, yeah, Jesus probably was saying to me, "You fool." And of course, we spoke yesterday about awareness and awareness allows us to be present. God wants us to have present moment awareness. He doesn't want us just to have awareness in hindsight. Most people have awareness in hindsight, you know? You might wake up tomorrow morning and think about, last Christmas, some family gathering you were at, and two people were arguing about something, and you wake up tomorrow morning, you realize, "Oh, I realize now, last Christmas when Jim and Mary were talking about that thing, what was really going on was this was the thing for him and this was--" okay, well that's great, but it took us what, 10 months to get to that awareness. So that's awareness in hindsight. Obviously 10 months is an exaggeration. Usually the next day or the next week we have an insight or awareness of hindsight. God wants us to have present moment awareness. He wants us to be aware of things while they're actually happening. And so today, I'll be praying for that present moment awareness so that I don't add more foolish things to my life, so that Jesus doesn't have to say, "You fool Matthew." because I don't want that to happen. Have a great day. And remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.