Tuesday, November 5, 2024

 Tuesday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time

(Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 14:15-24)

Many scholars are confounded by today’s first reading.  They think that belief in Jesus Christ as God did not take place until the second or third century.  Before this time, they say, Jesus was considered God’s representative, his prophet or anointed one, but not God himself.  Yet the reading clearly says that Jesus existed in the form of God before he became human.  Then he took a step downward, so to speak, to redeem humans from our sins. 

St. Paul probably wrote the Letter to the Philippians in the mid-fifties of the first century.  The passage today may come from a Christian hymn of perhaps a decade or two before the composition of the letter.  Belief in Christ’s eternal divinity, it can be said with confidence, goes back almost to the days of Jesus himself.

We need not worry that Christianity has no solid basis.  But the fact that it has does not result in automatic belief.  Many detractors hurl criticism of our faith.  And we might have our own reservations about giving ourselves completely to the Lord.  It is helpful to make an act of faith everyday and to explicitly put trust in the Lord.  We will find that He blesses us when we do so.

 

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