BE HUMAN! BE HUMBLE! BE HOLY!

⏰Tuesday of the Twentieth Week of Ordinary Time 2 (21 August 2018 – Memorial of St. Pius Xth)

📖Ezek 28:1-10; Deut 32:26-27ab, 27cd-28, 30, 35cd-36ab; Matt 19:23-30

Yesterday, we talked about the need to set our values right. In actual fact, we do not recommend an extraordinary attitude. Being yourself would be enough. The problems we normally have arises from our quest to answer what we are not. This reaches to the extreme when we try to play God. Even when you seem to have an extraordinary gift, try and remain human. It is in that state that God wishes that you use it.

Every gift and opportunity that we have come from God and must be used for God’s glory. St Paul talked about the gifts as instruments for building up a good community (1 Cor 12:7). We are all managers of the different gifts we have, and we become rich when we begin to hoard them, and it will be difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

In that context, we can distinguish between a rich man and a wealthy man. A wealthy man is one blessed with gifts in great magnitude but a rich man is one who is so attached to those gifts and tries to hoard them for his own personal use. It is the latter that Jesus condemned in Matt 19:23. Hoarding or mismanagement of gifts angers God (see Ezek 28:1-10). But he who uses his own well would be given even more (cf. Matt 25:19-23).

Despite his great intelligence and subsequent high offices in the Church, St. Pope Pius Xth remained a simple man, who practiced the virtues of poverty and fortitude. He used his position and wealth of knowledge to fight the theological errors that were sweeping through the Church at that time.

May God give us the grace to use our gifts and talents well for the glory of God so as to gain more blessings from him, and in the end, eternal life. Amen.

Have a blessed day dear. Peace be with you.