There are nuggets of wisdom being passed around social media. Here is one from an anonymous author whose gem of a piece is worth documenting on paper since it throws light on today’s Gospel passage.

“You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you or shakes your arm, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee?

‘Because someone bumped into me.’ Wrong answer! You spilled the coffee because there was coffee in your cup. Had there been tea in the cup, you would have spilled tea.

Whatever is inside the cup is what will spill out. Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you, whatever is inside you will come out. It is easy to fake it until you get rattled.

So, we have to ask ourselves, what’s in my cup? When life gets tough, what spills over? Will it be joy? Will it be gratitude? Will it be peace? Will it be humility? Or anger, bitterness, victim mentality, and quitting tendencies?

Life provides the cup; you choose how to fill it. Today, let’s work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation, resilience, positivity and kindness, gentleness and love for others.”

Beloved: This saying is trustworthy and deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Of these I am the foremost.

But for that reason I was mercifully treated, so that in me, as the foremost, Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example for those who would come to believe in him for everlasting life. To the king of ages, incorruptible, invisible, the only God, honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

Jesus said to his disciples: “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles.

A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good, but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil; for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I command? I will show you what someone is like who comes to me, listens to my words, and acts on them. That one is like a person building a house, who dug deeply and laid the foundation on rock; when the flood came, the river burst against that house but could not shake it because it had been well built.

But the one who listens and does not act is like a person who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the river burst against it, it collapsed at once and was completely destroyed.”