Friday, October 3, 2003
26th Week in Ordinary Time

1st Reading: Bar 1:15-22
Gospel: Lk 10:13-16

Jesus said, "Alas for you Chorazin! Alas for you Bethsaida! So many miracles have been worked in you! If the same miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would already be sitting in ashes and wearing the sackcloth of repentance. Surely for Tyre and Sidon it will be better than for you on the Judgment Day. And what of you, city of Capernaum? Will you be lifted up to heaven? You will be thrown down to the place of the dead.

"Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me; and he who rejects me, rejects the one who sent me."

Commentary

"We did not listen to the voice of the Lord... but each one of us followed his perverted heart, serving false gods…." One day while I was undergoing chelation therapy in a doctor's clinic, I met a Muslim missionary. I learned that he was a former Christian belonging to the Methodist church. I asked him what is a major difference between Christianity and Islam. "In Islam," he said, "we have a very clear monotheism. We worship Allah and no one else. Unlike the Christians, they worship not only God the Father but also Jesus and the Holy Spirit. And then you have many devotions to saints and from an outsider, the impression is you are also worshiping them." For the Muslims, Jesus is only a prophet like Mohammad and therefore should not be worshipped. But the truth is that Christianity is also a monotheistic religion, we believe in One God but in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And we believe in the Holy Trinity because that is the God revealed by Jesus. We can never understand Jesus apart from the Father and apart from the Holy Spirit.

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