Thursday, May 19, 2016

Enemy of the Good

James 4:13-17

What is the enemy of good?  What is the opposition, the force that resists the good that we can do, the good that we can be, the good that God wants to work through us daily in our life?

Where do find this nemesis hiding in shadows of our daily life of love, of give and take?

I think James in today's first reading certainly has pin pointed one of the enemies of Good.

Listent o what he has to say, "You have no idea what your life will be like tomorrow.  You are a puff of smoke that appears briefly and then disappears."


The enemy to good is presumption.  That is we often presume that we will have another opportunity, another tomorrow, another moment to the the good we are invited to do in this moment, this day, right now.

But we know this is not true.

In an instant, in a blink, in a flash, life has we know it can change.  How we live today can be altered forever.  We have all seen this life.  We know how fragile these moments we have are.  Yet, we still delay.  We still presume on time to come when all we truly have is the time we live in this moment.

James reminds us that we have today to love the good in our life.  We are invited to cast off presumption; cast aside that false notion of tomorrow and embrace the moment we are in today.

Today we celebrate the feast of St John 1, pope and martyr.  His epitaph on his tomb in Rome simply reads, "victim of Christ."  It could read he refused to put off tomorrow the good he was invited to live today.  This is how Christ lived.  This is how his disciples live.  This is how we are invited to live.

Christ is our life.  He is our only good.  Living in him, Him living in us, daily provides the moment for goodness to reign supreme in our life.


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