Word of the day

A reading from the Second Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians
5:14-21

Brothers and sisters:
The love of Christ impels us,
once we have come to the conviction that one died for all;
therefore, all have died.
He indeed died for all,
so that those who live might no longer live for themselves
but for him who for their sake died and was raised.

Consequently, from now on we regard no one according to the flesh;
even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh,
yet now we know him so no longer.
So whoever is in Christ is a new creation:
the old things have passed away;
behold, new things have come.
And all this is from God,
who has reconciled us to himself through Christ
and given us the ministry of reconciliation,
namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ,
not counting their trespasses against them
and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
So we are ambassadors for Christ,
as if God were appealing through us.
We implore you on behalf of Christ,
be reconciled to God.
For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin,
so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

From the Gospel according to Matthew
5:33-37

Jesus said to his disciples:
"You have heard that it was said to your ancestors,
Do not take a false oath,
but make good to the Lord all that you vow.
But I say to you, do not swear at all;
not by heaven, for it is God's throne;
nor by the earth, for it is his footstool;
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King.
Do not swear by your head,
for you cannot make a single hair white or black.
Let your 'Yes' mean 'Yes,' and your 'No' mean 'No.'
Anything more is from the Evil One."

Being free - according to the programme of Christ and his Kingdom - does not mean enjoyment but toil: the toil of freedom. At the price of this toil man ‘does not disperse’, but together with Christ “gathers” and ‘accumulates’.

At the price of this toil, man also obtains in himself that unity, which is proper to the Kingdom of God. (…)

My dear friends! This unity is your special task, if you do not want to give in, if you do not want to surrender to the unity of that other agenda, the one that seeks to realise in the world, in mankind, in our generation and in each one of us, the one whom the Holy Scripture also calls ‘the father of lies’ (Jn 8:44). (…)

Learn to think, speak and act according to the principles of simplicity and evangelical clarity: ‘Yes, yes, no, no’. Learn to call white white, and black black - evil evil, and good good. Learn to call sin sin, and not to call it liberation and progress, even if all the fashion and propaganda were against it. Through such simplicity and clarity, the unity of the Kingdom of God is built - and this unity is at the same time a mature inner unity of every man, it is the foundation of the unity of spouses and families, it is the strength of societies: of societies that perhaps already feel, and feel better and better, how you try to destroy and break them down from within, calling good evil, and sin the manifestation of progress and liberation. (St. John Paul II, Homily, 26 March 1981)