“But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.’ For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
New Revised Standard Version, copyright 1989, by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. USCCB approved.
It can be tough, no matter our age, to discover what truly matters amid all the distractions.
Ignatius, at the start of the Spiritual Exercises, encourages us to meet Jesus in prayer so that we might “rid ourselves of all inordinate attachments.” It is a challenge that the crowds in today’s Gospel, floundering in fickleness, might have found helpful too.
And so for us, with all the building joy and busyness of the season, we might ask ourselves what truly matters in this moment. In this case especially, the more is the merrier.
—Jordan Skarr works with the Jesuits at the Midwest province office in Chicago, assisting with programming for pastoral ministries.
At the coming of the Most High our hearts shall be made clean,
and we shall walk worthily in the way of the Lord.
The Lord is coming and will not delay.
—from the Cistercian liturgy
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