By following today's readings you can make today the first day of the rest of your life.

Monday, 7/11/16

You often hear it said that “today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Any day on which you decide to implement the day’s Mass readings will be the beginning of a new life for you. Let’s look first at how you would go about living by what the Gospel tells you. The Gospel tells you

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

By “your life” that saying means the high goals you have seen as needed for you to be happy. Like, the esteem of your peers, an influx of wealth, someone loving you. If you got all those things, there is no doubt that they would backfire on you. You’d be smothered by affection and you’d be surrounded by beggars. However, if you achieved none of those goals, you might find yourself beautifully free.

Then, in today’s first reading Isaiah tells you to “Learn to do good, and make justice your aim.”    

Living that way could be most fulfilling. There was an example of that in yesterday’s paper. The Jordanian government has lacked the capital needed for it to either support its flock of refugees or to get rid of them.  Then, somebody at the World Bank who had “learned to do good, making justice his aim” came up with the idea of making giant cash loans to Jordan’s government, in exchange for their issuing work permits to the refugees. People on both sides are happy now. If banks can make justice their aim then anyone can.