. Today’s gospel reading is very short, just four verses: Jesus spoke to the crowds:

‘What description can I find for this generation? It is like children shouting to each other as they sit in the market place:“We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn’t dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn’t be mourners.”‘For John came, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He is possessed.” The Son of Man came, eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.”

After reading this passage, the working title I had for today’s post was “you just can’t win”. Too often the process of education (both in families and schools) is motivated by a desire to please others so that they will give us the recognition, the rewards, the work and the money that we think we need in order to be fulfilled. While few of us would admit that we are people-pleasers it is easy to get caught in the trap. And it is a trap since, as Jesus points out, even when we do what people say they want, they won’t be happy. The personal cost of being motivated by the desire to fit in is a loss of personal integrity, and even a sense that we might have sold our souls. And that word “integrity” features in today’s first reading: “your happiness would have been like a river, your integrity like the waves of the sea.” Integrity: what you see is what you get, same on inside as outside, authenticity. So if the response / reaction of others is not a stable measure of how well we are doing, where are we to look? You know where I’m going with this: our only stability is found in personal integrity which is experienced in relationship with Jesus Christ.