7th JULY. TUESDAY IN WEEK 14

1.Genesis 32:23-33

2.Matthew 9:32-38

MEDITATIONS AND REFLECTIONS

What the gospel suggests briefly is treated at more length in today’s story from Genesis. Matthew has Jesus visiting all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues and curing every sickness and disease. He does not detail the weary journeys, the mixed receptions, sometimes favorable and sometimes not, that Jesus met with during that ministry. It is the same lesson to us that in our call as Christians we ought to face the same challenges. However, Jesus does not make any attempt to describe how people, once cured adapted the new life situations ( he did not look appreciation from such people).

Familiarity breeds contempt, this is well expressed in our gospel reading today more especially when we heard contrast about Jesus made between the ordinary people and the Pharisees. The ordinary people said “Nothing like this has ever been said in Israel.” The Pharisees said, “It is through the prince of devils that he casts out devils.” The people saw God at work in what Jesus was doing, while the rest, Pharisees did not see an image of God in Jesus, and they only saw an image of Satan. Likewise, let us ask ourselves this simple question that ‘ do we ever recognize and appreciate good things in our brothers and sisters?’ or we always see negatives and failures on what they do?’ In our everyday life experiences we have seen that some lack a sense of an appreciation, theirs is the spirit of spelling out others mistakes and complaining. The people in contrast to the Pharisees were attuned to the presence and action of God in Jesus. We can be sometimes prone to seeing what is missing in some situation and to miss the good that is actually there. We can be actually be inspired at naming what is wrong than what is right. We can be more attuned to noticing evil than good. The gospel encourages us to be open to the ways that the Lord is at work in our lives and in the lives of others, even when they failed to see it for themselves, and others failed to see it. We need to have an extra sense of feeling the good potentiality in others. Let us have a constructive attitude towards others instead of having negative images on what others do.