Today’s readings can be found here.
Reflection
In today’s Gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus explicitly speaks of the end of the world. He’s not simply speaking catastrophically about life but realistically confronting us with the objective truth that everything about this story of ours is destined to come to a close, to a finish line, to an end.
The end point of our life will also coincide with an experience of the distinction between things. What in life has always been a mixture of good or evil, light or darkness, strength or weakness, and so on, will eventually be distinguished and separated, exactly as farmers do when, after the harvest of grain, they no longer have any tolerance for what isn’t grain:
“He who sows good seed is the Son of Man, the field is the world, the good seed the children of the Kingdom. The weeds are the children of the Evil One, and the enemy who sows them is the Devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Just as weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.”
Here then arises a question: What is the majority of our life made of? Is it made of wheat or of weeds? That is, is it made of things that matter, or trivial things that ultimately have no substance?
Sometimes we don’t realize that we spend a lot of time and energy on things that turn out to be empty in the end, and really have no more weight than dust.
It would be interesting for us today to make the decision to live for what is lasting and to stop giving importance to everything that is only appearances.
~
Father Luigi Maria Epicoco is a priest of the Aquila Diocese and teaches Philosophy at the Pontifical Lateran University and at the ISSR ‘Fides et ratio,’ Aquila. He dedicates himself to preaching, especially for the formation of laity and religious, giving conferences, retreats and days of recollection. He has authored numerous books and articles. Since 2021, he has served as the Ecclesiastical Assistant in the Vatican Dicastery for Communication and columnist for the Vatican’s daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
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