13A20.    2 Kings 4:8-11, 14-16a.   The woman who extends hospitality to Elisha, says, “I know that he is a holy man of God.”  In extending hospitality to Elisha, she is honoring  God at the same time.  Anyone whom God sends to do God’s work, spirituality has the presence of God in him.  Elisha, in turn, recognizes the presence of God in her, as she is honoring the presence of God in him, and so grants her a son.

Matthew 10:37-42.   Jesus said to his apostles: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”  Not only did God create us but also he created within us the capacity to love and be loved.  God is love.  He is one and only source of love.  The first of the two great commandments says, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” (Matthew 22:37)    The God who is the source of all the good we have should be the one who is entitled to receive all that same goodness from us.  One way we express our love for God is to love all those whom he loves, our fellow human beings.  Jesus is saying we are only worthy or deserving of him when we put him first, the root from which all our love flows.  In John15:5a, Jesus said, ‘Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing.” Also in John 13:20, Jesus said, “Amen, amen I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me,” God the Father. That same God is present in anyone who serves him and his will.

Romans 5:12-15.  Paul writes, “Just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life.  That newness is our life in Christ.   Each day we live “through him, and with him, and in him.”  The old self was a person, whose life was one’s body, keeping it well, pleasing it, and guarding it.  It was all about one’s physical, material life.  Now the newness of life is a body that is about its spiritual self because Christ now is the source of one’s life.  Now we “must think of ourselves as dead to sin and living for God in Christ Jesus.”