Daily Reading
First Reading
Jeremiah 20:10-13
For I hear many whispering:
“Terror is all around!
Denounce him! Let us denounce him!”
All my close friends
are watching for me to stumble.
“Perhaps he can be enticed,
and we can prevail against him,
and take our revenge on him.”
But the Lord is with me like a dread warrior;
therefore my persecutors will stumble,
and they will not prevail.
They will be greatly shamed,
for they will not succeed.
Their eternal dishonor
will never be forgotten.
O Lord of hosts, you test the righteous,
you see the heart and the mind;
let me see your retribution upon them,
for to you I have committed my cause.
Sing to the Lord;
praise the Lord!
For he has delivered the life of the needy
from the hands of evildoers.
Psalm
Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
I have become a stranger to my kindred,
an alien to my mother’s children.
It is zeal for your house that has consumed me;
the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.
When I humbled my soul with fasting,
they insulted me for doing so.
rescue me
from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
and from the deep waters.
Do not hide your face from your servant,
for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.
For the Lord hears the needy,
and does not despise his own that are in bonds.
Let heaven and earth praise him,
the seas and everything that moves in them.
For God will save Zion
and rebuild the cities of Judah;
and his servants shall live there and possess it.
Second Reading
Romans 5:12-15
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
Gospel Reading
Romans 5:12-15
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned— sin was indeed in the world before the law, but sin is not reckoned when there is no law. Yet death exercised dominion from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like the transgression of Adam, who is a type of the one who was to come.
But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.
Reflection
Friends, three times in today’s Gospel Jesus tells us not to be afraid. When we fear, we cling to who we are and what we have; we see ourselves as the threatened center of a hostile universe. Fear is the “original sin” of which the Church Fathers speak. Fear is the poison that was injected into human consciousness and human society from the beginning.
And fear is a result of forgetting our deepest identity. At the root and ground of our being there is what Christianity calls “the image and likeness of God.” This means that at the foundation of our existence, we are one with the divine power that continually creates and sustains the universe. We are held and cherished by the infinite love of God.
When we rest in this center and realize its power, we know that we are safe, or in more classical religious language, “saved.” And therefore we can let go of fear and begin to live in radical trust. But when we lose sight of this rootedness in God, we live exclusively on the tiny island of the ego, and our lives become dominated by fear.