Sunday Reflections - 2.10.11

God’s gifts to us are meant to do good

Last Sunday readings were all about vineyard and the PP spoke at length about it. He said we are all given a piece of the vineyards and told tp produce good fruits ant harvest time. God will judge us by the produce of our vineyards. We are given by God all that we need to produce the best grapes but do we manage to do that? Many of us continue to produce bad fruits which for which we will be definitely be punished accordingly at the right time and place.

Today we may not have vineyards anymore like before but we are given everything we need to do good but do we do that? Very often we use all that we have to do bad; accumulate more than what we need, deny others of their dues, suppress others of their rights and use our power and wealth to falsely accuse and condemn the righteous for standing up for truth and justice.

It is reassuring that Jesus in last Sunday’s Gospel tells us that the kingdom of God will be taken away from such people who abuse what they are given and given to those who do good and that the stone that the builders rejected will become the corner stone one day(Mathew 21 : 42-43).

Having found some consolation that God will finally reward the righteous was offset by what the PP said about how we should treat those who may not agree with our belief. According to him our faith is the only true faith that has come down from the apostles and all others are false. He advised us to chase away and close the doors to any one who comes to preach about Jesus in ways different from ours. Wouldn’t that be rude? Is that what Jesus would have wanted? I strongly believe that it is wrong to insist that only we are right and all others are wrong. By doing we are being egoistic, proud and arrogant.

Wouldn’t it be more Christ-like to invite even our enemies in, give them a drink and talk to them politely? If we do that we may be surprised that even the worst enemy may be ‘converted’ by our gesture and goodwill. It is time for us to prove that our faith is strong and we cannot be easily be misled.