Daily Mass Reading for Thursday, February 23, 2017

Sirach, 5:1-8 Wealth and power is something everyone wants, whether they admit to it or not. But the question is, once you have wealth and power, do you run the risk of being corrupted? It is a trap that is very easy to fall into, as history has shown us again and again. How many people have taken advantage of others, simply because they were in control of another person’s financial life? How many people have died at the hands of a single person’s action, simply because that one person had the power to decide the lives of countless numbers of human beings with a spoken word or a single stroke of a pen? The danger of being in positions of wealth and power is that, because of their good fortune, the wealthy and powerful forget that they still have a higher power to answer to, even if he cannot be seen in our physical world. They start to believe they are invincible because, on Earth, no other human being can stop them. Despite their sins, they will brush off remorse and guilt if a negative consequence doesn’t immediately befall them, and they risk falling into one of two very dangerous mindsets: 1) “I’ve done all these terrible things, yet nothing has happened to me. God either doesn’t care, or doesn’t exist.” 2) “I’ve studied the Bible, and it says God is forever merciful. No matter what I do, he’ll always forgive me in the end.” These ideas are false, misleading, and will result in you being destroyed at Judgment Day. If you are not truly remorseful for your sins, if you don’t feel a shred of guilt over the terrible things you’ve done and people you’ve hurt, make no mistake, God will know your confessions aren’t genuine, and that you aren’t sorry for committing those sins at all. God will not forgive you, and only flames will await you after death.