Are You With Him Or Against Him?

My Dearest Friends in Christ,

We are glad and privileged to be in God’s Presence in this special moment of reflection on His Word. The readings of today warn us against sin especially the dangers of jealousy, intolerance and scandal. May God gave us the grace to overcome all these.

To begin our reflection this morning, let us re-read these lines from the first reading and the Gospel. “..Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses’ aide, said, “Moses, my lord, stop them.” Moses answered, “Are you jealous for my sake?

From the Gospel we heard:
“…Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in Your Name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us.” Jesus replied, “Do not prevent them…” I juxtaposed these lines from the first reading and the Gospel for us to see more clearly the central message of today.

The attitude of Joshua and the Apostles is not different from what many Christians are doing today. For Joshua, as for many of us, Eldad and Medad, don’t deserve to share in that spiritual empowerment since they were not physically present when the seventy elders were empowered. Joshua was simply jealous. I once experienced a similar scenario in the past where someone donated money to be shared by every member of a group. On the day the donation was made, a serious disagreement ensued among those present. The disagreement was about who should be included in the list of recipients. While some insisted that the money should be shared equally with everyone including those absent, others insisted that those who were absent from the meeting on that day should be excluded. Those who insisted on excluding those physically absent wanted to get more since they would receive less if those absent were included. This group was not considerate of those who might be legitimately absent. Are you guilty of having excluded someone or a group of people for selfish reasons? Were you jealous if those who were absent or less deserving also got a good share? Do you know, that God’s blessings have no boundaries? Why should you be jealous that God does not exclude anyone in His gifts? Why should you be jealous that someone also gets what you have? Why should you think that you are more qualified and more deserving than another? Moses instructed Joshua to be tolerant. This selection is intended to provide a Biblical background for Jesus’ response to the same kind of jealousy noticed in his Apostles.

On the part of the Apostles, they had this lofty belief that they had a monopoly on the prophetic power because they belonged to the group that possessed the power and therefore anyone outside the group did not have the power to prophesy. Is this not a partisan political mindset? Is this not the kind of mentality that militates against growth and productivity in society today? Is this not similar to the attitude of many who wish to remain in power and wouldn’t want anyone or any other party outside of theirs to be in power? Knowledge, wealth, power, nor success should not be an aristocracy of a few but a democracy of all. Thanks to the timely and encouraging response of the Masters Jesus and Moses, Joshua and the Apostles would have done something unjust out of jealousy and intolerance.

Dear child of God, no matter how blessed you are, a true sense of self-fulfillment, comes when we succeed together or when you are happy seeing others succeed. We build a community where everyone is happy, when we tolerate others knowing too well that they are not as privileged as we are. Stop being jealous. “Jealousy has no limits; it is an evil that continually endures and a sin without end. The lies of jealousy burn hotter in proportion to the increasing success of the person who is envied.” _St. Cyprian of Carthage

In the second reading, James warns the rich against giving scandal by their denial of social justice to their workers in refusing to give them a living wage, by ignoring the needs of others, and by condemning and murdering the innocent. Withholding a day-labourer’s wage was a terrible act of injustice, tantamount to murder, in the agricultural economy of the ancient Middle East. Baptism commits every Christian to work for social justice, through peaceable rather than violent means. Let us be kind, generous, and just.

In the Gospel, we hear the strong warning of Jesus against giving scandal, especially to innocent children, vulnerable members of our community, and those weak in the Faith. Jesus instructs the Apostles, and us, that, just as a doctor might remove by surgery a limb or some part of the body to preserve the life of the whole body, so we must be ready to part with anything that causes us or others to sin and which leads to spiritual death. This may happen within the Church, as a result of the scandalous life of many of her children. Let us pray and work hard to give good examples to heal the wounds of the past. Whether it is jealously, intolerance, or scandalous lifestyle let us distance our selves from sin which turns us against Christ and demonstrate our togetherness with Him by living exemplary holy life.

May God give us the Grace to avoid any conduct that will lead to scandal, to be forgiving to others without condoning their evil, who are examples of weakness and to avoid any form of jealousy that will militate against our spiritual growth and fulfillment.