Jesus contrasts His contemporaries’ knowledge and understanding of natural processes with their inability to understand the importance of His presence among them. With all their knowledge, they are still unable “to interpret the present time.” The present time is the time of His presence among them, when He announces that God’s Kingdom has come! It is also the time when He is calling everyone to actively participate in establishing the Kingdom on earth. He is calling everyone to action! Like Jesus’ contemporaries we are knowledgeable in many different areas; in history, politics, psychology, gardening, philosophy, and so on. Like them, we may also not realize the importance of the present time, of the Kingdom of God that is growing among us, and of our commitment to this Kingdom of justice.
Most of the time we are aware of the need to live our commitment to God’s Kingdom in whatever we are doing. However, we also experience what Paul describes in the first reading of today: we want to do good, but instead do something bad, that we don’t really intend to do. We want to be supportive of relatives who need a good word but instead waste time and energy with our smart phones and other devices. We want to live “green” but instead avoid carpooling, or don’t recycle. We want to spend quality time with our partners and children but instead decide to focus on our work. The list of such failures is long. At times we may be tempted to give up the ideals that are part of our faith commitment. Why to bother with wanting to do good if we cannot live up to our ideals!
It’s like we have lost our judgment. True judgment involves the whole person mentally; memory, intellect, and will. Memory assists us in recognizing the pattern or the action from the past. Intellect helps us discern what is the proper course of action. The will must be invoked to act on the proper course of action.
Of course all three of these are covered by grace. By ourselves we can do no good. It is only with God's assistance that we can discern and act upon the proper way. God has clearly marked out the path for us and gives us the grace for the strength to follow it. We must learn to reorder our faculties to desire what God desires for us and not to desire that God should change His will to suit our needs.
Saint Paul shows us how to deal with our frustrations. He doesn’t give up because he is convinced that God will do something good through him. What for an encouraging insight! Despite our failures, God will do something good through us.
In Luke, we are advised how to respond to failures. If things go wrong, we should not overly worry; we should not lose our ideals and motivation; we should not give up. Instead we should “settle the matter on the way”! We should simply ask God for forgiveness for our failures, apologize to others, and then continue being involved in working for His Kingdom.
Failures are common in our commitment to God’s Kingdom, but we believe that God will nevertheless do something good through us, will forgive us when things go wrong, and guide us in our involvement with his Kingdom. Our role is to pray, keep informed, and then step into the darkness, the unknown, with FAITH.
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