Attitude is Everything.

Homily for September 13, 2017

A person’s attitude may be said to refer to his mind-set, belief or orientation about a particular thing. One’s attitude determines to a great extent how one would react when faced with a particular challenge or in a certain situation. This explains why the same thing could happen to two persons and while one is happy, another becomes sad.

If my attitude towards old people is positive, I find great joy taking care of the old and I do not consider the time I spend with them as wasted. However, someone with a rather negative attitude towards the old will never give his or her best and will look for every opportunity to be away from them.

An attitude is acquired by consciously training the mind to think in a particular way or see life in a particular way. An attitude is like a dress code, it will either open doors for you or shut doors against your face. What kind of mind-set do I have towards God? What do I understand the Christian life to be? What are my biggest priorities?

When we take out time to meditate on what Paul says to us in our first reading today, we can see that the battle against immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, and so on can only be won by a deliberate effort on our part to SEEK THE THINGS THAT ARE ABOVE.

Are you stuck in sin? For instance, do you have a problem with pornography, masturbation, fornication, indecency, anger, quarrelling and the likes? The solution is to set your mind to things that are above rather than the things on earth. In other words, change your value system, change your mind-set regarding these things.

St. Paul says: “Put to death what is earthly in you; immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire and covetousness… put them all away; anger, wrath, malice, slander, foul talk… do not lie.” In fact, St. Paul wants us to put off the old man in us (that is, old habits, old ways of thinking, corrupted mind-sets) and take on the new man.

Coming down to our Gospel passage, Jesus gives us the beatitudes, that is, the BE-ATTITUDE of the Christian. Each of these be-attitudes represents how we should approach life if at all we seek to attain heaven.

The good news is that an attitude can be learnt or unlearnt. So let us begin today to learn these positive attitudes which Jesus describes in our Gospel passage; poverty of spirit; willingness to suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness and avoidance of mere human praises.

Let us pray: Let Jesus, change my heart. Amen.

Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you. God bless you. (Wednesday of the 23rd week in Ordinary Time. Bible Study: Colossians 3:1-11 and Luke 6:20-26.)

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