5th Sunday Reflection: Knowing Good From Evil
Franciscan Reflections From The Hermitage – Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time Year C
Knowing Good From Evil – (Luke 5:1-11)
A moment of grace, our vision clears, and we see ourselves in the reflection of Gods’ goodness. “Go from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” To see ourselves as we are, to know ourselves, this is grace. Yes, God is within me and light is within me, but there is also another side that seeks to hide in darkness. It is against the revelation of this shocking reality of our concealed fractures that God’s grace is something beautiful, awesome, and overwhelming.
Without this revelation, our tangled motives, self-interest, glib self-righteous anger, is continually at work feeding the ego to keep us satisfied with constant false assurances: I am right, I am good, I am better than those others, I am deserving of success, happiness, and the fulfilment of my desires and dreams. This is the path that leads to claiming for ourselves the right to designate good and evil according to our particular judgement, claiming for ourselves equality with God… the ongoing story of genesis.
The illusion of self-righteousness keeps us static, blocks our development, and makes us unteachable, incapable of unselfish love. Suffering is the key to the door of a hardened, prideful heart. Suffering leads us into that compassionate stance that knows our own need for mercy and forgiveness, knows our need for the healing hand of Jesus. The outcasts and rejected understand this; Suffering partakes in the story of Jesus
Jesus’ words spark Peters’ conscience revealing his anger that calloused over by the regret and sadness that accompanies a lifetime of difficulties, losses, struggles against good and evil… and failure.
I rather like this about Peter; so much like us, angry and fearful, jumping to conclusions, subject to procrastinating yet at the same time filled with enthusiasm and great empathy. This is the nature of Peter who betrays the Lord so many times, suffers guilt and remorse, cries bitterly, but returns each time to the source of grace and Love that he experienced that first day in the encounter with Jesus.
Awe turns our awareness towards the sacred with a profound sense of wonder, beauty, reverence, and humility in the presence of a power that is greater than we are. Awe helps us to create a genuine vision of life’s meaning that leads us through our fear and anxiety.
Without a foundation of this beacon of awe, we can so easily try to manipulate religion, spirituality, those around us, and even God who is the source of all that is Good, beautiful, and True.
Not every emotion of apparent awe is however genuinely based on that which is truly holy, respectful, and loving nor will it nurture the loving-kindness, and humility on which joy, peace and spiritual freedom depends. Discernment is needed. Discernment is the ability to decide between good and evil. Discernment is the process of making careful distinctions in our thinking about truth. Discernment needs the light of God’s Word who is the person of Jesus.
The key to living an uncompromising life of integrity lies in our ability to exercise discernment in every area of our lives. Failure to distinguish between truth and error leaves us subject to illusion, fear and anxiety.
Discernment is an area where many of us stumble. Often we exhibit little ability to measure the things we are taught against the standard of Gods’ Word, and we inadvertently engage in all kinds of compromise, convoluted decision-making and distressing behaviour. Without God’s Word we are unarmed and defenceless.
Gods’ Word provides us with the needed discernment about every issue of life. God “has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence”.
“Do not be afraid… I am with you always.”
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