When you are insulted, respond with a blessing!

When hardship comes your way, bear it patiently

As I have repeatedly suggested, the Church, deeply aware of God’s revelation through Jesus, strives to help us learn how to live during this present earthly existence so we might advance in our union with God. The purpose of this present existence is to learn how to be truly human, that is a person who lives like Jesus lived.

To live like Jesus lived requires that we honestly assess our attitudes of mind. They are, as you know, the foundation of all of our behaviors.

When you honestly analyze the teachings of Jesus you come to see that He focused all of His teaching on helping others begin to have a better image of themselves and a more positive image of their fellowmen, even their enemies. He did this mainly by the way He treated all others, even those that His society classified as outcasts and enemies. He positively responded to all others who came to Him in need of healing and comfort. Consider how He treated the possessed, the leprous, the Samaritans and Romans, the blind, crippled and even the adulterous. He treated all with respect and, of course, with unconditional love. He truly judged no one. He demonstrated how one should live in accord with the four basic rules of right-living (I presume that all of my readers are, by this time, quite aware of these basic four rules).

We find, as we search the Gospels, that Jesus only chastised those who displayed hypocritical behavior, that is who, by their words, pretended to be religious but, by their behaviors, were hateful, judgmental, and critical of others.

As I think about today’s Gospel miracle story of how Jesus cured the possessed boy, I am struck by the fact that this story can have a much deeper meaning. Think about this!

First, the possessed boy did not bring about his condition by any acts of his own. His possession, I think, reflected the attitudes of his society. The attitudes were quite frequently negative and hate-filled.

Second, the apostles were unable to cure the boy. They had not yet sufficiently changed their way of thinking to bring this about.

Last, Jesus reminded all that in order to change and not be possessed by the attitudes of society, you have to have faith and belief in God’s presence in your life and be convinced of His love. The way to build one’s faith and awareness of God’s love, Jesus suggests, is by prayer and fasting. When we consciously pray and fast, we indicate that we want our faith to grow and we want to change our attitudes so that they are more and more like those that Jesus modeled when on earth.