Lord My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul, 14 October 2025 Tuesday in the Twenty-Eighth Week of Ordinary Time, Year I Romans 1:16-25 ><}}}}*> + ><}}}}*> + ><}}}}*> Luke 11:37-41
Lord Jesus, give me the courage and boldness of St. Paul to declare "I am not ashamed of the Gospel" (Romans 1:16); how wonderful that he was able to echo your very feelings and stand when invited by a Pharisee to a dinner:
The Pharisee was amazed to see that he did not observe the prescribed washing before meal. The Lord said to him, “Oh you Pharisees! Although you cleanse the outside of the cup and the dish, inside you are filled with plunder and evil” (Luke 11:38-39).
Invitations and being ashamed go together but do not necessarily match perfectly; to be invited means to be included, a gesture of hospitality and kindness that sometimes make us feel shy and ashamed; however, many times when invited we feel "obligated" to be untrue in our feelings and thoughts in order not to offend our hosts while sometimes, there are those who abuse and overstep in the hospitality of the one inviting.
But you, Jesus, tells us today that an invitation is not merely to get into a house or home but of the other person; hence, an invitation is a call to be true for it pertains to something inner within us not to be ashamed of what true and good like your words that pierce the surface, "You fools! Did not the maker of the outside also make the inside?" (Luke 11:40).
Let me go inside myself Jesus but, most of all, come to me, Lord Jesus and feel me with your honesty and sincerity, courage and boldness to be not ashamed of what is true and good. Amen. Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Our Lady of Fatima University Valenzuela City ([email protected])
