God likes to make use of smaller, poorer and less powerful people to fulfill His divine plan. God chooses the weak so that no one will doubt that the merit of the good things attained belongs to Him. For example, for the evangelization of America, God chose St. Juan Diego, an Indian not a Spanish, to carry the message of the Virgin Mary to the bishop.If God asks something from you, do not be scared, nor feel cocky, because He chose you to make sure no one doubts, starting with you, that His is the merit of anything good that follows. The history of salvation is God's work and we are unworthy collaborators.
The apostle's life is difficult if you live wrong. The apostle is a witness of God. The apostle preaches what God inspires him and what God has done in his life. If the apostle forgets to pray and he forgets to ask God for help in every job, then everything starts to go wrong, because the work is of God, not of the apostle. Remember Jesus Christ praying. Christ is the role model for all good apostles.
In today's reading taken from a passage in the book of Judges, we find Gideon, a farmer turned warrior by God's request, pursuing the enemies of Israel even though he was outnumbered by a ratio of fifty to one. Fifteen thousand enemy soldiers against three hundred badly supplied men. I recommend, before you read, that you make a prayer to the Holy Spirit to enlighten you.
4 When Gideon reached the Jordan and crossed it with his three hundred men, they were exhausted and famished.
5 So he said to the men of Succoth, "Will you give my followers some loaves of bread? They are exhausted, and I am pursuing Zebah and Zalmunna, kings of Midian."
6 But the princes of Succoth replied, "Are the hands of Zebah and Zalmunna already in your possession, that we should give food to your army?"
7 Gideon said, "Very well; when the LORD has delivered Zebah and Zalmunna into my power, I will grind your flesh in with the thorns and briers of the desert."
8 He went up from there to Penuel and made the same request of them, but the men of Penuel answered him as had the men of Succoth.
9 So to the men of Penuel, too, he said, "When I return in triumph, I will demolish this tower."
10 Now Zebah and Zalmunna were in Karkor with their force of about fifteen thousand men; these were all who were left of the whole Kedemite army, a hundred and twenty thousand swordsmen having fallen.
11 Gideon went up by the route of the nomads east of Nobah and Jogbehah, and attacked the camp when it felt secure.
12 Zebah and Zalmunna fled. He pursued them and took the two kings of Midian, Zebah and Zalmunna, captive, throwing the entire army into panic.[1]
Points for reflection.
1. The apostle sets out to win souls to God with all the disadvantages. His only advantage is God, but God alone is enough to win, because the souls are thirsty for God.
2. The apostle has to beg for help and often can not find it because people ask for proof in exchange. The people asking for proof also thirst for God, but have stopped looking for Him because they do not want to lose the privileges they have earned.
3. The path of the nomads is the way of those who are in transition, the path of youth. Young people constitute a social group where the apostles can win many souls to God.
Let us ask Mary to teach us to be good apostles letting ourselves be guided by the loving hand of God.
God bless you.
[1] Judges, 8, 4-12
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