Posted by The WORD in other words (2018) by Fr Franlou Bardon SVD – Togo
Friday 26th Week in Ordinary Time
One evening in my mission area in Togo, Africa, I found students studying in our conference hall because they had no electricity at home. Certainly, these students knew how to seize little opportunities in life in order to succeed.
Life abounds with many opportunities. If we do not grab them, we lose our chance to grow and become better versions of ourselves. At times, we refuse them because we are afraid to pay the price. Others ignore them thinking that something better may come later only to find out that what they have refused was given to others who were more cooperative to the unfolding of God’s grace. Some ungrateful ones blatantly ignore opportunities. They fail to appreciate the generosity of the source of such favors.
In the Gospel today, we can sense the reason why Jesus deplores the unrepentant places of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. Unlike Tyre and Sidon, they have the direct opportunity to hear and believe in the Good News of Jesus. But they simply reject him. There are opportunities that knock only once like Jesus’s presence in the midst of unrepentant places. Only later will they discover how foolish they are.
The failure of such unrepentant cities serves us a warning to us all. We cannot afford to miss the chance to accept Jesus as our Savior. Jesus sends us many of his messengers who carry his authority wherever they go. To reject them is to reject Jesus and the Father who sends him.
We cannot justify our refusal by saying that we are too busy in our career at present or that the affairs related to Jesus take much of our time, for what is asked of us now is just to consider Jesus as the main tree of life’s opportunities from which the rest branch out.
