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Gospel: Luke 14: 12-14
On a sabbath Jesus went to dine
at the home of one of the leading Pharisees.
He said to the host who invited him,
“When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment.
Rather, when you hold a banquet,
invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind;
blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you.
For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
The Gospel of the Lord.
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Every so often, we hear stories about people who apply the Gospel to their daily lives in a very literal way.
For example, Mother Teresa’s parents took today’s Gospel passage to heart. “When you hold a lunch or dinner,” Jesus says, “invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.”
Whenever they held a large family gathering at their home in Albania, Mother Teresa’s parents would send her and her siblings out into the streets to invite those who could not repay them – literally the sick and the homeless.
I can only imagine what kind of conversations they had around that table.
Those dinners instilled in Mother Teresa from a very young age a passion for the world’s poorest – and, in many ways, set the tone for the rest of her life.
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Like Mother Teresa’s parents, can you remember a time when you took God’s Word literally – and acted on it? What effect did it have on your life?
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As it’s written in the Letter to the Hebrews, “The Word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword… able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart.”
Find a biblical passage that speaks to you today… and act on it.
Who knows, it may change your life.
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