MEDITATION TIPS (#270)
— 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time,
September 21, 2025

“The children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.” (Luke 16:8)

　This saying could be expressed using the term “business opportunity,” commonly used in today’s society. For example, moving used to be very difficult in Japan. So, companies specializing in moving were established, and many people use their services. Similarly, when people faced problems with termites or hornets, companies emerged to exterminate them. When issues arose from hoarder houses or vacant properties, companies were founded to clean them up and manage them. Thus, whenever society encounters difficulties, people find business opportunities there, establish companies, and create jobs. As the sayings go, “Risk is opportunity” or “Necessity is the mother of invention,” people in society have learned to transform hardship into opportunity.

　Then, let us find opportunity within difficulties in the same way for our even more precious faith. This concerns the experience of sin. Many saints, beginning with Jesus’ disciples, experienced God’s grace that overcomes sin precisely through the experience of sin. The disciples’ greatest mistake in their lives was abandoning Jesus and fleeing during His Passion. Yet, through their encounter with the risen Jesus, they came to know His greatest love—the love that forgives even those who betray Him. Therefore, being a sinner is a tremendous opportunity to learn God’s love.

　Everyone makes mistakes. However, people learn more from failure than from success. By reflecting on it, new opportunities can be gained. “Never be ashamed to admit a mistake. For it is another way of saying that today you are wiser than yesterday.” (Alexander Pope, English poet) Thus, once we learn something new from a mistake or failure, it ceases to be merely a mistake or failure and becomes a “precious experience.” We often express this sentiment as “thanks to that time.”

　Freud, the first to study the “unconscious,” discovered that disorders like neurosis stem not from problems in the brain’s structure, but from the unconscious exerting a powerful influence on the brain. According to him, the more one tries to become strong, the more one focuses on one’s own weakness, unconsciously causing harm. True strength grows from acknowledging one’s own weakness. Once you admit you are weak, the compulsion and fear that you must be strong disappear. You must not try to become strong by imitating strong people. He also stated that only those who truly acknowledge their own weakness can live a fulfilling life.

　Paul expressed this truth two thousand years before Freud: “But very gladly I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me... For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). Weakness is the greatest opportunity for the sinner to grow in faith. For it is precisely where we feel weakest that God is present.

 　　　　　(Contributed by Father Yutaka Akabae)