Click here for today’s Scripture readings.
Thessalonians 2: 1-8
Matthew 23: 23-26
Jesus excoriates the scribes and the Pharisees for being bad leaders and false guides. He complains because the picayune matters they insist on distract people from the real issues of the law: justice, mercy and fidelity. Paul too wants the Thessalonians to remain faithful to the gospel they’ve received and not heed the people who are preaching a God of vengeance.
We still have preachers in our own day and age who would have us believe that God is some kind of tyrant – we see televangelists who whenever a disaster occurs, claim that it’s God’s will and punishment on our world.
No matter what anyone says that is not the God revealed to us in the person of Jesus Christ. We weren’t put here on earth to appease a capricious God. Life is tough enough without fearing that God is out to get us! People who try to tinker with God’s love by making us paranoid ought to be avoided – whether they’re televangelists or just some busybody who feels the need to make our lives miserable.
Our God gave everything so that we might have life – and have it more abundantly. Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be clung to. Rather, he emptied himself and took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of men. He was known to be of human estate, and it was thus that he humbled himself, being obedient even to death, death on a cross.
“Because of this, God highly exalted him and gave him the name above every other name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.” (Phil 2: 6-11)
That’s the faith Paul tells us to hold fast to – and there are no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.
Fr. Damian Towey, CP is a member of the community at Our Lady of Florida Spiritual Center, North Palm Beach, Florida.
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- God Changed! Can we? (thepassionists.org)
