BE PRODUCTIVE AND LIVE!

⏰Friday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time 1 (28 May 2021)

📖Sir 44:1, 9-13; Ps 149:1b-2, 3-4, 5-6a, and 9b (R.v.4a); Mark 11:11-25

🎤BE PRODUCTIVE AND LIVE!

Beloved in Christ, the time of the great harvest is ever closer. Please ensure that you bear good fruit which would ensure your continuous existence even after your earthly existence. Remember that the good that men do lives with them and follows them. But evil men have no good place in history (cf. Sirach 44:9-13).

We must therefore encourage our leaders, in whatever capacity, whether spiritual or temporal, even as low as to the family level, to learn a lesson from the actions of Jesus in Mark 11:11-25. It is a case against unproductivity.

Just as he did in the case of physical and spiritual blindness (Mark 10:46-52), Jesus will mix up the cases of physical and spiritual unproductivity in one long event. First, he saw a fig tree which had no fruit and cursed it (Mark 11:12-14). Next, he entered the Temple, a house of prayer and worship, probably to pray. But instead of meeting people at prayer, he met them trading, bearing no fruit of sanctity, a case of spiritual unproductivity. So he swept them out (Mark 11:15-18).

I just imagined what Jesus would do with those he would meet going to market or farm on Sundays instead of going to worship him. What of those who make noise and make use of their phones in the Church?

By the way, it was not the time for figs to bear fruits. Yet, Jesus cursed the fig tree for not bearing fruit. In our call to discipleship, we are expected to bear fruit in season and out of season because Jesus would return at an hour we do not know.

Finally, with the assurances of Jesus in Mark 11:22-24, we pray that God may instil into the hearts of our leaders, the spirit of equity, fairness and productivity so as to lift Nigeria and Nigerians to a better state. Amen.

Have a blessed and productive day ahead. Peace be with you.