Daily Reflections - February 1,2013

SPACES IN THE HUMAN SOUL

 

Leave no room for chance! This seems to be one of the main tenets that modern seminars and teachings on planning and management promote. The effective manager, the gurus would say, has a clear vision and foresight,  and accounts for every resource at hand to obtain a desired result. To my dismay, a good number of Church leaders also subscribe to these “success today” teachings. They run their communities and ministries and drive their flocks into exhaustion, very much like what they do in the corporate world. Yes, they achieve results, but at the cost of empty hearts and broken spirits. Jesus reveals to us that His most important goal in His mission and ministry is the establishment of the Kingdom of God, which really means the reign of God, or the experience of God, giving meaning to every person’s works and experiences. External results, like the expansion of the believing community, are important but are secondary to the person’s deepening experience of faith in God. For Jesus Himself declared, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but he loses his soul?” In this regard, spaces are important. The human soul matures not in haste, but with many candid moments and grace.

The two parables in the Gospel today underline two needed spaces for God to work out His plans in the interior life of a person:

1. Spaces of Time. This is emphasized in Jesus’ story about the seed sprouting, growing and yielding while the farmer sleeps. Against a culture that is too conscious with time, God’s time is not kronos (time kept to the seconds), but a kairos (time of fulfillment in accordance to God’s will).

2. Spaces in Our Thoughts. The Parable of the Mustard Seed illustrates this. The smallest of all seeds, the mustard surpasses expectations of proportion in its full-grown stature. One cannot imagine how a small seed could grow to a tree whose size in full maturity is remarkable. God’s work is such —beyond logical proportions and expectations. Fr. Domie Guzman, SSP

 

REFLECTION QUESTIONS: How do you pray to God? Are you a slave to your logic and rationality when you talk to Him?

 

Lord Jesus, help me to tame my tendency to live according to the world’s standards. Aboveall, may I follow Your way.