06-02-24 Melepaskan Topeng: Menjadi Diri Sejati di Hadapan Tuhan

Tuesday 5th week in ordinary time "Mk 7:1-13" The Pharisees and the scribes asked him, "Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with hands defiled?" And he said to them, "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, 'This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men'." Poor Pharisees, they had lost the plot! You see? It's not that they didn't do anything; they usually did everything that God had asked them to do. Well… not everything. They omitted the first commandment: Love. They fulfilled their duties as good servants. But they forgot that God doesn't need servants. He wants children. A priest explained his conversion like this: "I wasn't a bad priest. I just wasn't a good one. I did all that I was supposed to do. I 'said' Mass every day; I 'said' the Breviary, the Rosary and my prayers every day. I did my prayer, half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening. I 'read' the Gospel and a spiritual book for 15 minutes every day. I did all that and thought that was fine. I wasn't unhappy but I wasn't happy either." "On the second day of my retreat I was reading the parable of the Prodigal Son. Suddenly the words of the older brother hit my soul: 'he answered his father, "Lo, these many years I have served you, and I never disobeyed your command"'. Here I had a son who was more like a butler. And I felt like that too: I was giving to God what 'I had to', but reluctantly. I was like the Pharisees. Then I looked at the Crucifix. I felt tears coming to my eyes. There, bleeding, was Him suffering for me to become a child… not a servant. I felt I was cheating Our Lord. From the Cross He seemed to be saying: 'This is not it! I didn't shed my Blood just to make you a butler! I died to make you a child! I don't want your 'things'. I want your love. I want your heart. I want you!" "That day I asked Mary to help me to stop being a 'butler of God' and to become a child… to stop saying Mass and to start celebrating It; to stop doing my prayer and to PRAY instead. Since then, I don't feel like a servant who fears: I'm now a child who LOVES!" Mary, my Mother, I ask the same for myself.