Why being good is a hard thing to do.

SHARING MY REFLECTION: “Why being good is a hard thing to do?”

22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 1, 2013

(Luke 14:1,7-14)

Reading the gospels is not like reading any other book where one tires and get bored.  Reading the gospels is like discovering new gems every time we read its pages.  Musing at today’s reading one can causally infer that our Lord teaches that too often used theme of humility and propriety.  But as I looked at the last verse of our reading I found this part which goes this way: “blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” 

Why indeed it is difficult to be humble?  Why is it difficult indeed to invite the ungrateful?  Why is it difficult to take the lowest place in society?  Because doing the humble thing requires a belief in the doctrine of the “Resurrection of the Body”.  There are several points that I find in this line that will have implication in the way we live our faith.  First, the call and the challenge to believe.  Now a day’s seldom do people express their faith in public.  Sometimes when we talk about our faith, we always do it with a tinged of embarrassment as if we are not suppose to talk about it openly. Faith in what? Faith in the teaching that someday there will be a resurrection of the body.  That this dead body that we have will be brought back to life again in an immortal state and in an entirely cleansed and purified world.  This matter calls for faith and no one can believe this unless God will give that kind of faith.  For it is only God who can incline our mind to faith.  Second, we have to be convinced of God’s goodness, that somehow whatever good we do and whatever self effacing move we take will be rewarded in heaven.  Often we believe more in our own goodness to chart our lives.  We take pride in our achievements and we take pride in our honours or the feather’s in our cap so to speak.  But we seldom believe that God can truly reward us.  The problem with this attitude is that God’s reward though the surest, is always in future tense, which calls us to again to faith.  But indeed how narrow is the path that leads to salvation that only few take it and fewer still attain to its goal.  Indeed we need to pray for perseverance and we need to pray to be good, truly good.  Can we take the lowest seat?  Can we invite to our meals the person we hated most or the person we despise the most?  Can we do good things without expecting a reward or payment?  Now I know the reason why it is so difficult to be good.  And I fail many times.  But I am full of hope and faith that Jesus will give me the grace and strength to be good, no matter how many times I fail.  And no doubt we can always look up to the resurrection.  Here finds the greatest appreciation for the eschatological dimension of our faith.  This material world we live is only a place of exile, a means to an end and not the end.  Let us then be good for God is good all the time. Amen.  Blessed Sunday to every one.  –Sincerely, Herbert Rosana