THURSDAY 16TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B. By Tobe Eze

THURSDAY 16^TH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR B.

1^ST READING: JEREMIAH 2:1-3. 7-8. 12B

GOSPEL: MATTHEW 13:10-17

THEME: WHY THIS CHANGE?

We are made to know that our forefathers who first accepted this faith were travelling very far with their legs in order to attend masses and receive other sacraments. Today everything is now at our beck and call but we are no longer embracing them. Why the change?

God is asking us in the first reading through Jeremiah why we have left him the fountain of the living water.

The gospel has given us reasons for that. Because we have closed our hearts from accepting the word of God, we have closed our ears to hearing it, closed our eyes from seeing the workings of the word of God.

A man who lived in Lagos for years came back empty handed. His kinsmen paid for him to go and learn a work. He did that for two months and stopped (a work he should learn in three years). When he was asked the reason for that, he said that even the Bible said it that the rich shall become richer and the poor shall become poorer, that he sees no reason why he should suffer himself while the bible is in support of the situation. He closed up to all the words of admonitions and advice given to him by his kinsmen and friends. That is also our problem today. We take positions and say we cannot move again when we have many opportunities to move more.

The rich shall become richer and poor poorer is not just the literary understanding but it has a spiritual dimension. St. Augustine who noticed God late in his life became rich in the Lord and in order to become richer he shouted. “Oh have I known you late”. Those who have the knowledge of God will look for him the more and gain more of it but those who do not have and do not make effort to have, even the little they know will be taken away from them. This change towards evil is the result of our closed areas we should have opened. Let us open our hearts, minds, eyes, ears and every other places we can open for God and get richer in his knowledge and heaven will be ours. This change is not favourable to and for us. Thanks.