In whom am I putting my trust?

In today's first reading, Jeremiah 1: 5-8,  the Lord says to us: "Cursed is the one who trusts in  human beings, who seeks his [her] strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord.  [Such a person] is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth." In other words, if my trust is in human beings and not in God, that is, I have turned away from the Lord, I am in deep trouble!  If I seek my help from human beings only and do not go to God, I will find myself eventually in a desert.  That is what has happened to those who, having engaged in criminal activity, are in our prisons.  This also happens for those of us who occupy the  "prison" of non-life-giving, selfish, sinful choices, hurting ourselves and others.  By repeatedly choosing such choices, our lives enjoy "no change of seasons."  However, when, in hope,  we turn to the Lord from the "lava waste" and from the emptiness, God is waiting to help us out of the mess into which we may have sunk!

"Blessed are they who hope in the Lord," we pray in today's responsorial psalm. "Blessed the [person] who follows not the counsel of the wicked nor walks in the way of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law day and night. [Such persons are] like a red planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due seasons, and whose leaves never fade. Whatever he does, prospers. Not so the wicked, not so"!

What kind of choices am I, are you, making?

Jesus Enters our Humanity Fully and Lovingly

Today's Gospel, Matthew 1: 1-17, presents the genealogy of Jesus.  His ancestry contains murderers, assassins, adulterers, prostitutes, persons involved in all kinds of deception, corruption, and idolatry!  Throughout all of that history, God's plan of salvation and showing humankind the depth, the length, the height and width of God's love is never thwarted. God, the Creator  of the Universe and of all of humankind enters humanity. Jesus, the Incarnate God, as the God man, was plotted against throughout his public ministry by educated men who saw him as a threat. They became jealous of him to the point of having Him, the Son of God, crucified as a public sinner.

Just as the plan of God to save humankind from Satan's snares and to show us the depth of God's love for us was never thwarted throughout the history of the Jewish people, so, too, today, God's love for you and me and for every member of our ancestral history  is never thwarted. God's plan to save us will prevail!  God's love for us is not fickle or inconsistent.  He waits for us to return to Him,  if we have gone astray. He waits for our return as the father of the prodigal son waited for his son's return from a life of debauchery and wasteful living. God does not give up when we give up on ourselves or on a family member or anyone else! God waits because God's love for us is eternal and unconditional.

Will you, will I, come back to the Lord in repentance when we have lost our way and got caught in Satan's lies?