ashamed

What a lovely story
for this Monday, Jesus,
when many of us
got the blues so to speak:
many of us are like
that woman at the synagogue
"bent over",
"bowed down"
and for the longest time
have seen only the dirty,
hard ground below;
the reasons are varied, Lord:
many of us are bowed down
due to sins and evil,
pains and hurts and trauma
some from people we trusted
and loved, mistakes and missed
opportunities, and so many others
that have enslaved and crippled
us for so long like
that woman you
have healed;
you know so well
how much we have wanted
to break free from these long years
of bowed down posture so that
we may rise and straighten up our lives
to look up to you in the sky,
to feel the warmth of the sun,
savor the beauty of creation.

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

*Photo by author, The Manila Club, BGC, June 2025.*

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
(lordmychef@gmail.com)

Category: ashamed

Not bowed down anymore

On being ashamed & invited