Hello Friend!!! Welcome you to this Powerful Catholic Reflection for the day 21th February 2023. I am very happy to see you coming to read this reflection. Today’s readings.
Table of Contents
Readings of the Day
| First Reading | SIRACH 2. 1-115 |
| Gospel Reading | Mark 7:24-30 |
Focus of the Today
Greatness is a natural desire and aspiration of everyone. There is nothing wrong in itself. But the problem is when it is wrongly understood and wrongly pursued and acquired through false ways and means
Inspiring Catholic Reflection for the Day
1. In the gospel, the disciples were engaged in a discussion about who was the greatest. Today we are invited to reflect once again a little deeply and sincerely about our own concept, pursuit, and means of gaining that greatness. Jesus dispels the wrong notions of greatness and clarifies what it means to be truly great and how to become rightly great.
2. In the first place, real greatness is not something material. It does not consist in money and material possessions. But the world wrongly thinks that the more you have money and an abundance of things, the more you are great. Those who have little or less, those who are not well-to-do, and poor are regarded as insignificant, unimportant, and not worthy, and thus are treated with disrespect and contempt.
3. Accordingly, the whole concern and struggle of life is to accumulate as much money and material things as possible. There is a total disregard for the kind of means that are employed to acquire them. All that matters is to become moneyed and possess things by hook or crook. That is why we find steep materialism and consumerism, deception, and unaccountability. Sane values are often thrown into the sea.
4. Real greatness is not something merely social. It does not consist in power and position, status and prestige. But the world wrongly thinks that the more you are in power and authority, the more you are in a big position and hold a high social status and prestige, and the more you are great. Those who are ordinary, those who do not hold a notable post or job, and those who do not have an above-the-ordinary standing and ranking in society, are not respected and not taken seriously.
5. Accordingly, the efforts of many are always geared to climb to the higher rungs in society, regardless of the rightness of their actions. That is why we find so much spirit of power-mongering and power-corruption. We find corrosion of the right values and an explosion of compromises. We also find excessive eagerness to dominate and suppress others, with the feeling that “I am superior to others, am greater, better, and worthier than others”.
6. Further, real greatness is not merely intellectual. It does not consist in great intellectual calibre, academic excellence, and achievement or bundles of knowledge or reckoning honours of educative contribution. The world wrongly thinks that the more you are intelligent and competent, the more you excel academically, and the more you are considered great. Those who are just average or dull, those who are poor in grasping, and those who do have a poor performance track, are despised as useless.
7. Accordingly, some spend an enormous time and energies on their intellectual pursuits. In the process, they do not realise that they become “brain-wise monsters and heart-wise dwarfs “.
8. Then what is true greatness? How does one obtain it? The gospel and the other readings make it clear. True greatness consists in not desiring to be placed over others, dominating and bossing over them. It is not eager to be first in power and position but first in service.
9. True greatness is the commitment to God’s will and mission. Subsequently, it also implies the readiness and courage to face the consequences, to go through the ordeal of the way of the cross, even to the extent of death. This is what Jesus did. This is what we find in the lives of the prophets, the righteous exemplified by the suffering servant of Yahweh.
10. True greatness is receiving even children that is, the vulnerable and the uncountables and negligibles in society. It accepts and respects them. This is contrary to the mindset that one becomes great by association with big people. This is why often we find that great people may have their own “social circles”, or “privileged elite”. They create an aura around them that there is an air of inaccessibility and unconcern and uninvolvement.
11. Further, true greatness consists in receiving the exa mple of a child. Among numerous qualities of a child, in this context, those that the truly great would embody are purity and guilelessness of heart, total trust and dependence on God, love for God and always seeking to please Him.
Direction For Life
In the ultimate analysis, to be truly great is to consistently nurture spiritual tenacity and productivity and to lead a righteous and forbearing life
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Note
Hope you had a good experience reading the catholic reflection for the day. With another inspiring message we shall meet in the next post. Stay Tuned in Biblemsg.com Thank You.
