We have to serve God and neighbour
Day 12
Readings: Is 1, 10, 16-20; Ps 48, 8-9, 16-17, 21.23; Mt 23, 1-12
Isaiah recommends that we make a clean breast of our wrongdoings and pray for God’s pardon. Further on the proactive side, we need to take in the Word of God in all humility and practise even simple acts of kindness.
Jesus has a special word for leaders of all times, of the kind that don’t practise what they preach.... They are like the Pharisees and Scribes of yore, self-serving and even exploitative; in their vanity hanker after titles and draw the people to themselves rather than joyfully showing them the way to the heavenly Father.
That’s the context in which Jesus said that God alone is our Master, Teacher or Father…. Yet again, Jesus uses hyperbolic language to drive home a point: that the leaders should be service-oriented, for “whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.”
Jesus humbled himself taking the form of a servant and we are called to do likewise: serve God by serving our neighbour.
