II Corinthians 5:20 – 6:2 & Matthew 6: 1-18 Holy Spirit, teach me to live into reconciliation with God... Jesus’ life and ministry focused on reconciling humanity with God. Although his passion and resurrection, his redeeming work, was a once-for-all event, it is up to each individual to embrace Christ’s redemption by practising the presence of God through prayer, fasting and the giving of alms. “Be reconciled to God”, Paul says. “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” These upcoming six weeks of Lent, will I invest time and energy into my own and my community’s reconciliation with God? Holy Spirit, teach me to live into reconciliation with God. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. (Psalm 51) We need to be poor! Let us live an ordinary life, but, beloved, let us live it with a passionate love for God. Become a mystery. Stretch one hand out to God, the other to your neighbour. Be cruciform. … Christ’s cross will be our revolution and it will be a revolution of love! Catherine Doherty www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei
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Mark 8:14-21
Before Jesus, Herod the Great called himself the Messiah of the Jews because he had rebuilt the Temple. The Pharisees similarly were self-proclaimed religious exemplars of their day. Like yeast that permeates and inflates all the dough in a loaf of bread, so self-defined religion can infiltrate my society and my own being, inflating human character with false pride and displacing the Holy Spirit of God. Like yeast that (if bread dough is left too long to rise) always ferments to form alcohol and causes the loaf to collapse, be bitter to taste and to be unfit for consumption, so self-referenced power always leads to spiritual ferment, the collapse of a person’s moral character, bitterness of heart and soul and ultimately rejection from the Kingdom of God. Have I allowed the yeast of self-empowered religion to infiltrate my being? Christ Jesus, help me beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod, help me avoid self-defined religion. Happy are those whom you discipline, O Lord, and whom you teach out of your law, giving them respite from days of trouble. (Psalm 94:12,13) When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul. King David, Psalm 94 www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei James 1:1-11
When he wrote his letter to the churches, St. James, like all of the other disciples of Jesus (except his brother John) who like him were martyred, was well aware of how fiery trials and troubles could be. Yet he opens his epistle with the words, “whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy...” Patience-building, yes; but joy? How could James say this? He continues, “...you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.” When I allow joy, rather than long suffering or perseverance, to be my driver to endure trials, my steps become firmer, and I understand better where Christ is leading me. Do I have the courage and the wisdom to perceive my trials and troubles in the context of joy? Holy Spirit of God, help me endure with joy the trials set before me. It is good for me that I was humbled, so that I might learn your statutes. (Psalm 119:71) Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring. St Catherine of Sienna www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 7:24-30
So very often I ‘have ears but do not hear’ and a mouth but do not speak. Like the deaf person who could not speak, I need my ears opened by the Lord to hear his words of mercy spoken through scripture, circumstances and other people. Similarly, I need my mouth loosened to be able to speak words of mercy, faith and hope rather than words of complaint, anxiety, or hopelessness. Do I even realize how deaf and mute I am, to ask the Lord to heal me? Christ Jesus, open my ears to hear and my mouth to speak your words of mercy. O that the people would listen to me, that they would walk in my ways. (Psalm 81) What you are is God’s gift to you. What you become is your gift to God. Hans Urs von Balthasar www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 1:40-45
The man with leprosy said to Jesus, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” In order to make this statement with a true heart, the man had to first choose to be healed. Like all other people who came to Jesus for healing, the leper first acknowledged his sickness and longed for restoration and reconnection with his people. Then he learned about Jesus, and recognizing Jesus’ healing ministry the man chose to approach Christ and ask him for healing. Do I choose to be made clean –physically, mentally, socially, emotionally, spiritually? Do I even acknowledge that I need healing? Holy Spirit, help me choose to be made clean. You are my refuge, Lord. With deliverance you surround me. (Psalm 32:7) What you are is God’s gift to you. What you become is your gift to God. Hans Urs von Balthasar www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 7:24-30
Whatever my go-to is for joy, that is what my soul feeds on. Jesus easily equated his ministry of mercy with food – food that should be used to feed the children of God, the Israelites, first and foremost. The foreign woman who begged him to heal her daughter had clearly discovered how palatable the healing of Jesus was and sought out the mercy of the Lord despite the disruptive act of being a foreign woman speaking directly to a male Jew. Even when Jesus was uncharacteristically brusque with her, the woman chose to savour the ‘crumbs’ of mercy – instead of dwelling on the divisions between her and the Master. She focused only on the healing grace of Christ Jesus that she had heard so much about. What do I feed on, what crumbs do my heart, mind and soul savour –crumbs of division and discouragement, or morsels of mercy, no matter how small? Holy Spirit, help me feed on the mercy of God. The judgements of the Lord are just; they are always fair…. They are sweeter than the purest honey. (Psalm 19:9,10) I suffered a lot but my soul was still singing! I have nothing left, but I still have my heart and with that I can always sing and love. Blessed Chiara Luce Badano www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei 1 Kings 10: 1-10 & Mark 7: 14-23
St. Mark gives us a checklist of the evil intentions of the heart that Jesus spoke of when he was teaching his disciples. The list reads like a sewer of human nature: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. King Solomon as a young man started off full of wisdom and righteousness so significant that even the Queen of Sheba consulted and honoured him. Within a few short years though his heart became increasingly full of evil intentions, so much so that God rejected him and he died in misery, surrounded by the evil that had spewed out of his life. Our only hope is to have the help of the Holy Spirit of God, to purify the intentions of our hearts. Holy Spirit, purify my heart that no evil intentions spew out of me. Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him and he will act. (Psalm 37: 7) Let nothing disturb you. Let nothing frighten you. All things are passing away, God never changes. St. Teresa of Avila www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 7:1-13
The Pharisees and scribes, all of whom had been brought up in the Jewish faith, became so committed to God that they wielded authority in society. Limited so much by their own perceptions of God by which they fed their pride and self-righteous agendas, they could not recognize Jesus or hear the Gospel of love and truth that was giving commoners in the crowd light and life. Am I like the Pharisees and scribes committed to my own right perceptions or to the commandments and wisdom of God? Holy Spirit, help me embrace and proclaim not human perceptions but the true commandments of God. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness. (Psalm 84:10) If you do not live what you believe, you will end up believing what you live. Archbishop Fulton Sheen www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 6:
Holy Spirit, help me bring my sick to Christ Jesus ... It was a choice the people of Judea made when Jesus was travelling the countryside. Either they packed up their sick and went through the inconvenience of bringing them to Jesus for healing, or stayed at home neither confident or engaged enough in their own faith journeys and their relative’s need to bring him/her to the Master. It will always take extra effort for me to bring my sick – whether family members or friends, or even my own illnesses –to the Lord. First I will need to recognize the Lord in his healing power; then I will need to acknowledge and care about the dis-ease that requires the Lord’s healing touch; and finally I will have to take the time to meet with Jesus in prayer and ask in faith for his healing work. Do I have what it takes to seek healing from Jesus? Holy Spirit, help me bring my sick to Christ Jesus, so that they, so that we, may be healed! The Lord heals the broken hearted, and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147: ) “I have learned that faith means trusting in advance what will only make sense in reverse.” Philip Yancey www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei Mark 6:30-34
Like so many called to full time ministry, Jesus and his disciples were swamped by the overwhelming needs of the people coming to them, so much so that ‘they had no leisure even to eat’. Good leader that he was, Jesus proposed a small retreat for him and his men. So they set out across the sea to go to a ‘deserted place’ by themselves –only to be met by an even greater crowd of people reaching out for them. Jesus’ response? Instead of avoiding the crowd or carving out ‘me time’, Jesus ‘had compassion’ for the people, milling around in their not-knowing like so many sheep without a shepherd and ‘began to teach them many things.’ Like Jesus, am I willing to forego times of retreat to ‘have compassion’ for the people who have been drawn into my life? Christ Jesus, teach me how to always have compassion. I treasured your word in my heart, so that I may not sin against you. (Psalm 119:11) God provides the wind, but you must raise the sails. St. Augustine www.gospelmysteryoftheday.weebly.com Soli ad gloriam dei |
AuthorBeverly Illauq lives in Kemptville, Ontario, where she greets each morning by seeking the Gospel Mystery of the Day - the Word of the Lord for direct and practical application to the specific challenges & joys of the day. ArchivesCategories |