Photo by Markus Winkler on <a href="https://www.pexels.com/photo/black-and-white-typewriter-on-table-4065400/" rel="nofollow">Pexels.com</a>
Readings for Today. Listen to our other podcasts.
David is seeking to impart the wisdom of his life to his son Solomon.
The Life Review
It’s very common when someone gets to the end of their life to do what is known as a life review. In other words, you begin to reflect on the various moments of your life, and you begin to seek gratitude for those things which were blessings in your life.
But what is more typical in my experience is going over those things that you regret in your life. Mistakes that you’ve made, sins that you’ve committed, etc. And it’s a very, very common experience in the last stages of someone’s life. If you’ve worked in hospice care, you see it quite often.
And I don’t think it’s a part of life because people–maybe they are– but I don’t think it’s a part of life just because, well, we’re getting ready to see God and I’m terrified of the judgment and so forth. But as much as it is, I’ve lived my life, I need to acknowledge my blessings, I need to acknowledge my sins, and recognize that both are the gift I give to God. That’s what David is doing with his son Solomon.
The Gospel and the first reading give us an insight into things that are really important for us, that sometimes we lose our way when it comes to what is critical. I’m not sure all of the things that David said to his son Solomon, who was going to be king. I’m sure on some level there was some advice on how to be a king, and there was some advice about how to deal with these people or that person or so forth. But that wasn’t considered important enough to record at the end of David’s life.
What was considered important enough to record was, “Follow God. Keep his statutes.” That is the most important priority. Solomon is going to start well, quite frankly, but if we read his story, he’s going to end badly. He’s going to abandon his faith for a faith that hardly seems worth having because of the horrible things that it does. I mentioned this in the weekend homily about child sacrifice, for example, and things like that. It just got very, very bad for Solomon.
Similarly, in the Gospel, we have an interesting thing. Jesus sends out disciples, but it’s interesting what Mark mentions as kind of being the significant parts of the mission. They’re going to preach. They’re not to get worked up if people don’t accept them, and they’re going to make a statement about the lack of acceptance.
But fundamentally, what are they sharing with people? What’s the message that Jesus wants the disciples to give? Repentance. He wants them to go out and preach repentance. When we look at the life of St. Dominic, he had one real question that drove everything he did in creating the Dominican Order. His question to God was this. He was deeply consumed with this question. What will become of sinners?
That was the question that he asked himself over and over and over again. In deep sadness, with tears, he was concerned that someone could live their life and not be saved. And he wanted to know, “Lord, what will become of sinners?” And from that, the great enterprise, the great mission of the Dominican Order was born.
If you look at the beginning of our Constitution, we were founded for a particular purpose. It says in the beginning, the Dominican Order, the order of preachers, was known from the beginning to exist for the preaching of– for the salvation of souls and the sacred preaching. That we had a message to bring to people that was good news, that they could be saved by God, that they did not need to be held bound by their sins, that there could be this loving relationship with Jesus, and that it could lead to eternal salvation if they simply accepted what God wanted to do in their lives.
We ask the Lord today to help us to be faithful to preaching and the work of the salvation of souls by proclaiming to people what it is that God longs to do in their life.
On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.
About Author
