In this section you can find a daily commentary on the Gospel of the Day.

Wednesday 26 June 2019

Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time

Word for today
The Gospel of Matthew 7:15-20

Yield and exploit

How can a false prophet be distinguished from a divine one? A false prophet has to show himself to the people in sheep's clothing, so that he can hide his true, ravenous, wolf-like nature. Why? Because the true nature of the false prophet is to exploit, to take utmost advantage of everything and everyone.
Exploiting means taking advantage of something to the detriment of others, making/letting others carry the burden, draining the energies of others for personal profit, profiting by damaging the harmony of nature, abusing one's power, taking advantage of the ignorance of others, throwing dignity to the winds, acting for personal interest and not in harmony with sharing, unity and justice, sucking the potential of others for personal vanity, depleting the energies of others out of envy.
From a human viewpoint, exploiting others, situations, and power is a way to gain fruits for personal benefit, for any kind of advantage, to mutiply interests and wealth. From the human point of view, taking advantage means to exploit-to harvest.
And 
what does exploiting mean from a divine perspective? Let's take a look at the analogy of the fruit tree to better understand: when it does not bear fruit yet consumes oxygen, water and its position in the earth, we say that it is exploiting the soil, that is, it is consuming energy and earth without producing anything useful, beneficial, fruitful. From God's perspective, anyone who uses his/her existence, gifts, other people, situations only for his/her benefit, and unnecessarily exploits the earth, is useless, fruitless, meaningless. According to the Gospel those who exploit, will remain without fruit.
From a human viewpoint, someone who exploits is clever and
shrewd; from a divine perspective, it is a behavior that reduces human life to a futile and useless waste denoting stupidity as well as arrogance.
False prophets exploit humanity and do not bear fruit for humanity. God's prophets can be recognized by their fruits, by the scent and fragrance of the Spirit they release, they can be recognized by what they reveal to you as it warms the heart and opens the mind. God's prophets can make mistakes just like anyone else, but they cannot bear bad fruit to humanity's detriment. Mozart was a prophet of music. His life was not perfect, but his music, which opened new musical and harmonic pathways, was. Moses was a murderer, yet the Lord asked him to save His people. King David was not perfect, but his psalms generated a new way of praying still used today; his music was, likewise, 
magnificent and powerfull. Paul of Tarsus was instrumental in persecuting  the Christians, yet the Lord chose him to be the beating heart of the first waves of evangelization during the first century. The Lord, it seems knows the hearts of His children, and prefers a heart that, although imperfect, is deeply in love with Him, rather than the heart of a perfect man who is not in love with Him.