Making Friends With The Lord Jesus Fr. Edwin

The good Lord explains to us today in the Gospel of the Mass that we need to address the waywardness of our passion called Anger. It should be the right kind of anger. Anger is one of the emotions God has given us. It is a certain vehemence of our strength in battling evil, i.e., evil that we ascertain to be conquerable. However, we cannot give it vent just like that. To be virtuous, it needs to be modulated and moderated by reason, and for Christians, by reason enlightened by faith. This latter means that we should hold Jesus Christ as our model and imitate Him in His Anger.

The Church sets up the life of St. Barnabas for our contemplation today. We can learn from him a lot, especially how he disagreed with the Apostle of the Gentiles and set off in separate journeys on the matter of St. Mark accompanying them.

The sense Jesus gives us about the Law and the Prophets is that these latter were incomplete. Jesus came to complete them, i.e., to perfect them. Thus, He follows the Law of Moses but as the Messiah, He adds to them. For example, with the law against adultery, He underlines the significance of the thoughts and desires against chastity. He explains that even when a man looks at a woman with lust, he already has committed adultery in his heart. We all remember that many Israelites just paid lip service to the Law. They remained only in the motions of obeying the commandments, but interiorly, they did not even care. Our Lord called them out on this.

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Barnabas, Apostle. Our dear Jesus expounds in the sermon on the mount after mentioning the Beatitudes that we are salt and light. Those are two realities that are well known by the Israelites. Our Lord benefits from them to teach that we are to exhibit the qualities of these realities. As salt, we need to give off flavor to our surroundings. That would mean that we cannot simply be unrecognizable in the crowd because we always adopt what people say and claim. What if they push an agenda that is anti-human and anti-moral? A follower of Christ would need to give witness to the truth that Jesus taught. Then, His followers need to be light. As light, Christians need to help the other know the truth so that they are guided properly through life to reach salvation. There are many errors and fallacies abounding in the world that people exposed to the media and so many hucksters of worldliness are sitting ducks. They are misled by falsehoods disguised as the truth. Then, our role is to help people reach and appreciate the truth.

We read today the Beatitudes according to St. Matthew. They are the new commandments of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. We need to learn to live them by depending on God's grace. We can narrow down to the beatitude that says "Happy the Gentle: they shall have the earth for their heritage." We all need to learn to be gentle. Furthermore, we are often tempted to be rough and violent. Impatience is something very proper of paganism, especially today, when most equate goodness with speed and quickness.

We can be His mother, His brother, or His sister as long as we do His Will! It is as simple as that. The Jews were so full of themselves as members of the Chosen People. They believed they did not have to have any interior conversion. It sufficed to have external actions. What was visible was enough. No need really for inner changes. Such internal changes were what God wanted. They were distancing themselves from God by such superficiality. So, Jesus made it a point to consider in the last paragraph of the Gospel today that they needed to have the conversion of doing God's Will.