REFLECTION FOR SATURDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK IN THE ORDINARY TIME 20TH JANUARY, 2018.

Today being Saturday of the second week in the Ordinary time is coincidentally the 20th day of January, the feast of Blessed Iwene Tansi (for Nigerian Church). Throughout this week we've been reflecting on God's call and human response. Today, the Church has presented us with someone who has answered that call. The celebration of the day not only manifest our weekly reflection but it also disposes us to the theme of next week, which could be understood as hearing the word of God and following it with a required actions,just as the people of Nineveh did. Tansi was able to answer God's call because he heard the word of God and acted accordingly. Dearest in Christ, the fullness of our happiness can never be achieved here on earth, rather in heaven. God is the happiest being existing and for us to be happy, we must unite with him in heaven. And that was why the gospel reading of today from Mathew 13:44-46, presented to us the image of a man who sold everything he got, just to buy a field deposit of hidden treasure referred as the kingdom of God. In the first reading from Philippians 2:1-11,Saint Paul presents Humility as a *sine qua non* in achieving the kingdom of heaven.Just as Christ who, though, he was in the form of God, didn't not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taken the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men (Philippians 2:6). No wonder, Blessed Iwene Tansi had to abandon every earthly things ,in order to live a life of prayer and sacrifice in the Monastery because of the kingdom of God. Tansi heard the word of God saying in Mathew 6:33,seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, every other thing will be added onto you and he took as his guide "entirely for God". Dearest in Christ, Our ultimate goal is the kingdom of God. Christ promised us in the gospel of John 14:2, that there are many rooms in his father's house. In his letter to Philippians 3:7,Saint Paul says that he has counted everything as loss for the sake of the kingdom. My good friend will always say in every gathering, that we are all running for a goal, the kingdom of God. Dearest, whatever you do, do the for the sake of the kingdom. Don't live a life thinking that happiness can be found in this world;in power? , in wealth? Never. Don't live a life as if to say we have no goal to achieve ;our goal is heaven. Don't live a life as if to say that everything ends on earth ; No. Always remember that our ultimate goal is heaven, where happiness abounds and the Responsorial Psalmist says, where we shall draw water from the wells of the saviour. Let us ask our brother blessed Iwene Tansi, to intercede for us today so that we may always recognise that our ultimate goal is heaven. For Jesus said in gospel of Luke 18:29,Truly I tell you, anyone who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will definitely gain it on the last day. And as we do this, May the Almighty God bless and keep us always?? the Father, the son and the Holy spirit. Amen