THE DIFFICULTY OF UNDERSTANDING THE MESSAGE OF JESUS?
Tuesday of the Seventeenth Week in Ordinary Time
My dear encountered couples:
You might sometimes wonder what I’m talking about up here. (Maybe you always wonder what I’m talking about.) Well, the apostles and disciples seem to have had that same problem with Jesus. We’re told in today’s reading that after Jesus finished speaking to the crowds of people and dismissed them, his disciples requested some further enlightenment in regard to what he had been saying. So, he explained more clearly his “Parable of the Weeds.”
Jesus was always willing to try to make things clearer for those who were interested. In fact, his parables were meant to lure the interested people into thinking and searching for clearer explanations. He wanted to get the wheels of their minds turning. For when they lie idle too long, thought mechanisms get lazy and rusty. But with all of us there are some things that are just too deep to figure out, and so we need to have someone clearly spell them out for us. That’s what Jesus did for his close friends.
Remember, you are a close friend of Christ. He wants you to take time out when you can and place yourself in his presence. Then he’ll do his best to help you understand his teachings and how to apply them in a practical way to your everyday problems and plans. It isn’t easy to apply the principles that Christ taught. But unless we learn how and then try out what we learn, his words will be just so much air and be wasted on us. Discuss what Christ taught with other people, but pray over his words and think about them in his presence.
