Necessary to judge

The psalmist from the texts of the Roman Catholic Lectionary today praises God who blesses the righteous. We can reflect on who are the righteous and how they are blessed. The psalmist describes the righteous as lights who are gracious, merciful, generous and conduct their affairs with justice. What are the blessings? We understand that a relationship with God has already blessed them with the very qualities that attract others and provide a light for today and a path for their descendants to follow. Do they win the Super 7? The association of blessings with material wealth is troublesome as it may lead us to practice our faith with the expectation that the “prosperity gospel” is our reward. The motivation to be gracious and merciful is to live in harmony with our experience of God. Friar Jude Winkler discusses the events behind the third letter of John where hospitality toward missionaries with philosophies in opposition to the Good News is questioned. There is a need to look a bit deeper here. We are called to hospitality to all. We are not required to accept the teaching of all and we may need to refute error and provide examples of our belief in circumstances where the civility of hospitality is being stretched by a proselyte. The Docitist missionaries are not welcome in this letter of John. They are preaching that Jesus is a material being and is not Divine. Friar Jude explains the statement of faith, Jesus is the Christ, is the proclamation against this heresy. The nature of our prayer relationship with God is described by Jesus in the text from the Gospel of Luke as one where we are to trust that the goodness of God will not delay in response to our petition and we need to approach prayer with the expectation that God seeks to draw us to the best possible result in the situation for which we pray. The process of drawing us to that best possible outcome is already underway because God can do nothing less. We need to continue to consult through prayer with God for the directions whereby we will trust His plan and experience resurrection from our lack of peace into the joy of following the Way.