Tuesday in the Eighth Week of Ordinary Time
Today's gospel might well be addressed to our culture, our society at large. Isn't the moral and ethical picture that we find before us today also a contest with God just as we read in the gospel today? In essence isn't every sinful action whether it be categorized by the Church or ourselves as "venial" or "serious" a testing of God and his goodness to us, his merciful love for us.
The Pharisees and Herodians mentioned in the gospel are testing what Jesus was teaching: the truth! Isn't the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ a manifestation of the truth for us? Each of us, looking at his/her life, can we not see that those moments of failure are the embodiment of an evil spirit challenging the graces of God that have been bestowed on us? Isn't sin also our challenging God proclaiming that we are stronger that God or know better than God?
Are not the actions of two and three year old children and so often teenagers looked upon as a challenge to parental authority? Isn't speeding, for example, an adult expression of rejection of a law? Is sin any different? Isn't it an expression of a person's efforts to be independent of the truth that God has put before us?
