In today’s readings and throughout scripture we often see a pattern of rejecting messengers of God. In the first reading prophet Jeremiah is rejected by his own people including his friends trying to take revenge from him and in the Gospel we see Jews trying to stone Jesus because he claimed he was the son of God but Jesus proves to them from scripture that there is nothing wrong
with what he is saying.

We may think that this will never happen if it was us, but there is all the chance that we may reject Jesus if he speaks to us today, since we are so unfamiliar with the word of God. We have so many different devotions and ways of reaching God today, but we have forgotten the most fundamental and the most essential way, which is the holy bible, ( The word of God) . It is difficult to know the ways of God if we do not read scripture on a regular basis, pray with it the word of God!! We may be dillusioned into believing that we are so close to God, just like the Jews of that day. They believed they were the chosen race but when God actually came to earth and spoke to them, they stoned him. One reason is, they were not familiar with the word of God and the other reason is that they understood the word of God in a totally different way to how it was intended by God, even though they might have read scripture or heard it in the synagogues, their hearts were not right with God so they interpreted the word of God to suit their own selfish desires and we see both these issues at work today in our world.

The first chapter of “The Imitation of Christ”, explains this further “ Now there are many who hear the Gospel often but care little for it because they do not have the spirit of Christ. Yet whoever wishes to understand fully the words of Christ must try to pattern his whole life on that of Christ”. Let us strive to understand the scriptures and follow the true spirit of Christ.

Prayer: Abba Father, we pray that you would give us the grace of reading scripture on a daily basis and to amend our lives according to your word. Amen