Today, Jesus reaches out to people. However, when we try to find a place where He could rest, the people continue looking for Him. This behavior is what we need to emulate and foster throughout the day: in happy times and in sad times, when we feel we are at the top of the world and when we feel we are at the bottom, etc.

Since we are in the business of dealing with God, we need to read Him correctly. But we go about this in exactly the way we look at Him. If we look at Him like the demon does in the gospel today--that is, he is fearful that God would destroy him--we should understand that that is because of his bad dispositions. His dispositions basically are described best by saying that he wants to displace or replace God. He likes to think that he is God, although this sounds quite ridiculous. But this was how he tempted Adam and Eve. He wanted them to fall for what he did when God required them a test regarding whether they, the angels, would serve Him or not. Lucifer and his companions didn't. Hence, they became devils. Because of his dispositions with regard to God, he rightfully feared God destroying Him. What if we had better dispositions, like that of trusting Him and loving Him, etc?

Many times we are baffled by the presence of evil. If God exists, why does evil exist? It is obvious that there is another source to account for evil and that is created freedom. Anyhow, Jesus in the gospel today reads an ancient text of sacred scriptures in the synagogue of Nazareth where it was prophesied what the Messiah would do when he does come. Jesus reads those deeds in book of Isaiah. He sits downs and avers that that scripture was being fulfilled by his coming. Good is being accomplished even when there is much evil around.

One of the greatest temptations we may get in this life and one of the greatest successes of the demon is to have convinced some of us that we need to focus only on this life here on earth, i.e., we should live thinking only of the success of this present life. Forget about the future life, i.e., eternal life in Heaven or Hell. The Lord in the gospel tries to dispel this shortsighted outlook.

We read about the famous parable of the talents that Jesus speaks to us today in the gospel of the mass. Believe it or not, these talents provide us with certain hope to reach Heaven.

Some of the first will be last and some of the last will be first. This is how today's gospel ends. The Lord gives us a glimpse regarding what is going to happen when the end comes. We will face Jesus who will judge us. The reality is that some who seem first in holiness will actually be judged below par, while there will be some last who will be first. These are those who seem not holy but they actually are. Find out what that means in the podcast homily for today.

The Lord criticizes the hypocrisy of the scribes and pharisees because they were more concerned about demanding from the people great fidelity to God and His injunctions. They, however, let themselves off any responsibility to follow those same demands. So, Jesus, condemns such superficiality in their religious practice. Hence, He tells the people to listen to what their religious leaders teach and not follow their example.

The gospel today tells us about another parable of Jesus where He teaches us about the Last Things, namely, heaven, hell, death, judgment. Jesus portrays heaven as a wedding feast. Our being to go to heaven is shown as the invite the king extends to his guests to attend his son's wedding. The story describes the reception of such an invitation. Find out what that is for we are all invited by God to Heaven. Some reject the invite. Others eliminate the emissaries of the king bringing the invitation. No one turned out to accept the invitation. So the king expands the invitation to anybody. They filled the wedding venue but the king found a guest not properly dressed for the occasion. He commanded his servants to throw that man out. That is hell!

Today, the Lord makes it plain to us that he demands from us everything and that we trust Him absolutely. We cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. We cannot have our cake and eat it!

We expound today a couple of Virtues needed for another living together with the others, namely, gentleness and Flexibility. We do so in the context of the young man's question to Jesus narrated in today's gospel.