16th Sunday in Ordinary Time The Reality of the mixture of Good and Evil in the World God created the world pure and good. Only good things He created, for He is good and source of good things and goodness. The creation story ends with creator’s words, “It was good.” With this, it is understood that God never created evil because according to what we said earlier, he is the source of good things. Despite of this truth, people keep on asking question about the source of evil in the world. Man is not the source of evil either for the fact that God created man good. Then, where evil come from? The story of creation tells us more. Remember the serpent? Biblical authors tell that it is the serpent who implanted evil into man’s heart so, came sin: the fall of man. Can a serpent speaks? Of course not. But the usage of a serpent in the scripture is symbolic or an allegory. What is the identity of the serpent therefore? When you hear the word Satan, what comes in your mind? I firmly believe that you are thinking is the same as mine. Satan can falsify things because the work of the serpent is the enactment of everything that Jesus ascribed to the devil. Brothers and sisters, good and evil co-exist. The parable of the weeds and wheat tells us about this proposition. The weeds when it starts to grow it is difficult to distinguish from the wheat only when it grew. It says in our gospel, “While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat…when the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appear as well.” The truth is, alongside with good is evil. God’s enemy is Satan. He is a fallen angel because of disobedience. He tricked eve using the form of a serpent. The goodness in Eve’s heart is destroyed because of the temptation of Satan. Here starts everything that we experience like suffering and death. Here we can understand the reality of good and evil in the world. In life, there are evil ready to destroy us, ready to destroy the good seed God planted in our hearts. He can snatch that good seed in us. He can take away all the goodness in us and replace it with evil things. How many times he snatched the good seeds in us? We experience this all the time how good and evil influence our decisions for they are intertwined. When we are doing good things, the evil one do something to brainwash us. If we want to give charity without expecting, the other voice, the evil one tells us not to do it because we are wasting it for nothing. Many instances in our lives that we hardly decide. Decision is expected from us because at the end of the day we define who we are according to what we have done or by our fruits. We need to be cleverer than Satan and decide for the good. If you are performing generosity expect that others are envious of you and will say, “Well that is not good deeds, it is fake.” There are also times that we are inspired to do charity and we want to spend some of our time with the poorest, abandoned, the sick or the handicapped but on the next day we expect scandals because of jealousy. But, how many of us are envious and jealous of our fellowmen. “Mea culpa, mea culpa mea maxima culpa.” I am speaking to myself and not only addressing this you brothers and sisters because I myself failed most of the time. We can change this the things we are used to by faithfully following the voice of the sower, Jesus Christ to fight against our constant struggles. Therefore, cautiousness and carefulness is a must. We must be clever and alert all the time most especially that today it is difficult to determine good from evil. Satan is the prince of lies and master of tricks. He is clever and wise, he can even trick himself for he is clever and because in the first place he is by nature not good. He can show himself good but in fact he is not. He can turn himself the most beautiful women that every men dream to be with. He can make himself too as the most handsome man in the world that every women dream. He can turn himself into different forms, using various mask like money, power, security, comfort zones and whatever leads us to feel great. If we fall and convince to his magic wand he owns us and he wins. This is the reality of human life. Good and evil are seatmates in our church, in politics, in our works, in our home and in our heart, so be careful he might be seating beside you or next to you. But whatever leads to destruction is evil and that is the border line. If what we are doing is not good for us, for our country, for our family and community then it is the work of Satan. Remember what I said earlier? God alone is the source of Goodness. Satan is the author of sin. Again, take care he can use you. We can be his instrument to spread evil in the world if we let him enter us. Amidst of this, shield ourselves with of faith and the sword of trust. Keep your faith, your trust and confidence in God alone and you will be fine. We must learn to use the shield of Christ our Lord to spare and help us defend ourselves from Evil. God is bigger and greater than Satan. A Pleasant Sunday to all!
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 12:38:17 +0000
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