BEAR FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

⏰Wednesday of the Twenty-Eight Week of Ordinary Time 2 (12 Oct. 2016)

????Gal 5:18-25; Ps 1:1-2, 3, 4 and 6 (R. John 8:12); Luke 11:42-46

????BEAR FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT

My dear, do you remember what Jesus told his disciples concerning the Spirit as he was preparing to leave them?????

He said that he would send them an advocate, the Spirit from the Father, who would teach them the things he was yet to tell them and remind them of the ones he already told them (cf. John 14:26). We need to dispose ourselves to receive that Spirit.????

How often do we live, in spirit and in truth, what we profess with our mouth? Jesus condemned the Pharisees and the lawyers because they were more interested in ‘religious show’ than in righteous life (Luke 11:42-46); they were being controlled by the world around then.????????????????

Are we not also guilty of that? I always ask myself, “Where do people see the priesthood in me? Is it in my white cassock or in the very life that I live?” Ask yourself too: “Where do people see my Christianity? Is it in my religious practices or in my life?”????

If people cannot identify me as a priest from the type of life I live even without my cassock, then I am a failure. Same applies to my Christian life.

What can help us come out of that failure is what St Paul recommended to the Galatians: live and walk in the spirit, which will help us shun vices and embrace virtues (cf. Gal 5:18-25).

We pray for a renewed and more disciplined spirit, so that we may not just be like the Pharisees and the lawyers who practiced religion to win people’s admiration. May we be driven always by the desire to do the will of God, amen.????????

I wish you a grace-filled and successful day. It is well with you.????????