May the Lord give you peace and health in the Holy Spirit.
It is 29th February 2024.
Who do we trust: in God or ourselves?
We reflect on Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 16:19-31.
The axis of all blessings is the undeniable trust in God.
Spectacularly unseen and unnoticeable blessings bestowed upon all those who trust in the Lord.
We have witnessed that the Lord never abandons those who placed their trust in the Lord. But those who do not trust the Lord doing well by convincing the others through their lifestyle that there is no need for God. There is no spiritual blessings and protection offered by God to those who put their trust in themselves.
Until today, there is no faculty of science or any other have the answer to eradicate the poverty and to overcome death.
The people who believe in God are the experts in giving to the others who are in need.
There is an enormous amount of sensitivity towards the suffering, pain, poverty in others when we believe in God.
By increasing wealth, power, position no person equips oneself to become a generous giver.
On the contrary, those who reject God and embrace the material wealth as their gods of happiness and satisfaction lack wisdom and aggregate a distance that cannot include the poor.
The prophet Jeremiah in the first reading points out clearly about two types of people: one who trust in the Lord and the one who trust in themselves.
We become and remain barren spiritually, when the roots of trusts are dried and poisoned by the deserted rivers of life.
We flourish and fortify ourselves by the living water that gushes from the spirit of God. We become poorer and more impoverished during the times of trouble if we go on trusting in human strength and aid.
The veins of the soul are strengthened and boosted by the trust we have in God. The most contagious sin of the contemporary society is routinely and knowingly forgetting and forsaking God.
We cannot fight all the battles of life alone with the limited skills and strength we have. Unless and until, we place all our trust in God, we remain in sin and have become to that fact that we are sinful.
Lent is the time to strengthen our trust in God by sharing our resources with the poor.
Our connections with God depend solely on the way we make the poor to experience a caring God intimate in dealing with their poverty.
Humanly inflicted poverty murders the banquet and bouquet of hope, love, and trust in God instantly.
The Gospel presents again two types of people namely the rich poor man namelessly and the poor rich man in the name of Lazarus.
The rich are like a dry shrub with its odourless yet ornamentally beautiful outside while the poor blossoms and blooms like flowers with fragrance even in the desert of hopelessness.
The material poverty is a synthetic hell for the poor to be crushed into pieces beyond recognition while the wealth and abundance is God made furnace for the rich to suffer and suffocate sumptuously. “I, the Lord, alone probe the mind, and test the heart to reward everyone according to his ways.” (Jer.17:10).
Death alone balances the poor and the rich alike.
We are here only once, let us use this opportunity as a privilege to serve, share and stir love than to store, steal and hate people.
The choice of trusting in God and sharing our resources with the poor is on our shoulders during this Lent.
When we have power to treat others better, let us do it with love, mercy, and compassion.
Let us listen to the prophetic Church that invites us during this Lent to share with the poor to experience God in eradicating the poverty of the spirit.
May you have a good day. God bless you.