Today's Gospel

Stop Avoiding the Truth

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we take a few moments together to read the Gospel of the day and reflect on the genius of our faith and the life God is inviting us to live. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Luke 4:24-30. And Jesus said, "Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country." But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land, and Elijah was sent to none of them but to Zephyr in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman, the Syrian.

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath, and they rose up and put him out of the city and led him to the brow of a hill on which the city was built, that they might throw him down headlong. But passing through the midst of them, he went away. So what are we experiencing here today? Jesus is-- he's traveling. He's a nomadic preacher, moving from town to town and village to village and city to city. And he's coming to the synagogue, and he's preaching, and the people hate him. Literally, they want to kill him. And they take him to the edge of town. I want to throw him off a cliff.

It's almost unimaginable, but it isn't unimaginable. Because Jesus met with this-- time and time again, and obviously, in the end, was brutally tortured and crucified. And why? I mean, what problem did these people have? There's a problem we all have, and that is that Jesus was sharing uncomfortable truths with them. And the truth always challenges us to change, challenges to grow. And we respond to truth, either with humility or with prideful arrogance. And when our heart's in a humble state and we hear truth, we're able to absorb it and to change the way we're living our lives. But when our heart is in a prideful state of arrogance, we hear truth, we reject it.

We don't want to change our lives. We want to do what we want to do. We want to be the master. We don't want to be the servant. But we're not the masters. We're the servants. And the question is, will we serve faithfully, or will we rebel against the master? And so today, what truth are you avoiding? What truth are you refusing to acknowledge? What truth are you trying to skirt? What truth are you refusing to adopt and absorb into your life? Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.

When's the last time you allowed an experience to touch the very depths of your soul? That's from my new book, Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy. If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, I encourage you to pick up a copy. It's about probably one of the biggest struggles in my life, and that is to escape the insanity of busyness and the insanity of the urgent. In order to allow experiences to touch the very depths of our soul, we do have to slow down to the speed of joy.