Some people are saying, and I was one of them; that "as long as I don't offend other people, I am very sufficient, I don't need to ask for the help of other people, it is enough."
Is it really enough? What our Lord Jesus teaches is Love your God and love your neighbor, which sums up the ten commandments.
I would like to share the reflection of Rev. Fr. Steve Tynan on today's Gospel:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CONVERTED?
The story of Paul’s conversion ought to cause anyone with sense to reflect on the meaning of their life. He believes he is a man with a God-given mission and yet he is totally wrong in his most fundamental suppositions. He encounters Jesus and his life is turned upside down and inside out! It is enough to make any sinner tremble with trepidation and begin to wonder if they are really on the right path.
Paul is not bad — he is in fact a good man. However, goodness in this sense is not a measure of whether or not he has a correct understanding of either faith or God. Listening to a preacher over the last weekend, I heard him say that it is not the “good person” who will enter heaven, but the one who is obedient to God’s will. What he means is that we assign the adjective “good” to a person without understanding about salvation. Avoiding evil is a good thing but it will not get you into heaven — only God can do that. And what God requires of us in order that we might be saved and have eternal life is that we believe in Jesus and do what He commands us to do as His disciples.
Faith is not just an intellectual reality — it galvanizes us into action and causes us to become a new creation in Christ. This is the experience of Paul and it is precisely this experience that we hear about again and again in his epistles. It is not a matter of what we can achieve on our own strength but what God has done for us and what He consequently calls us to as His followers.
Jesus is different from other prophets as His life is the path to eternal life (John 14:6). It is a path of obedience — of dying to Himself and living the will of His Father. This is the example He sets out for us and calls us to as His disciples. As He tells Peter at the end of John’s Gospel, it is his faith that will lead and direct him, not his own desires. We need to pray for a level of surrender and obedience to God’s will that none of us have ever truly fathomed yet. If we do fathom it, it is certain that we will become saints.Fr. SteveTynan, MGL
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