Daily Reflection | Gospel Reading | RVA

Gospel: Mark 3:7-12
Jesus and his disciples withdrew to the lakeside, and a large crowd from Galilee followed him. A great number of people also came from Judea, Jerusalem, Idumea, Transjordan, and from the region of Tyre and Sidon, for they had heard of all that he was doing. Because of the crowd, Jesus told his disciples to have a boat ready for him, to prevent the people from crushing him. He healed so many, that all who had diseases kept pressing toward him to touch him. Even the people who had evil spirits, whenever they saw him, they would fall down before him and cry out, “You are the Son of God.” But he warned them sternly not to tell anyone who he was.

Reflections
“You are the Son of God.”
Jesus is beset by such a crowd of people—many of them sick and possessed—that it seems as if he would be crushed by them. The crowd becomes so great that he has to escape to a boat and pull out from the shore. Do­rothy Day, an American Catholic who has been proposed for canonization, spent her life living among the poor in the slums of New York. In her “house of hos­pitality,” she practiced the works of mercy, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless. She did not romanticize this life among “the insulted and in­jured.” Surrounded by the sights and smells of poverty, including drunkenness, mental illness, and constant demands on her time and attention, she sometimes experienced the temptation to flee. “Lord, there are too many of them!” Yet she found in prayer an oasis of recollection, and was able to return, restored to her mission. Jesus himself needed time away from the relentless needs of the thronging crowd. He was after all, a human being. Yet he set no boundaries or limits on his compassion. This was his mission. For that he came.

© Copyright Bible Diary 2019

Gospel: Mark 3:1-6
Again, Jesus entered the synagogue. A man, who had a paralyzed hand, was there; and some people watched Jesus: would he heal the man on the Sabbath? If he did, they could accuse him. Jesus said to the man with the paralyzed hand, “Stand here, in the center.” Then he asked them, “What does the law allow us to do on the Sabbath? To do good or to do harm? To save life or to kill?”   But they were silent.Then Jesus looked around at them with anger and deep sadness at their  hardness of heart. And he said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and  his hand was healed. As soon as the Pharisees left, they met with Herod’s supporters, looking for a way to destroy Jesus.

Reflections
“Stretch out your hand.”
This text offers a sharp con­trast between a religiosity fo­cused on laws, judgment, and purity codes, and the gospel of Jesus. It is wrong to regard this as a contrast between Judaism and  Christianity. Jesus and his disciples were faithful Jews. By the same token, Christians are every bit as capable of ascribing limits to God’s mercy. In fact, it seems to be a congenital  defect among people of all religious traditions to draw a circle that includes themselves among God’s favorites and excludes everybody else. “Stretch out your hand,” Jesus says—dramati­cally poking a hole in such exclu­siveness. God’s law is directed to mer­cy, to goodness, to saving life. That is what the Sabbath and re­ligious law are for—not to bols­ter our own sense of superiority. How ironic that in this case the good religious people take this good news as a pretext for seeking to destroy Jesus. Before we smugly assume that we, as Christians, are on the right side of this story, let us ask ourselves if we are not also capable of as­suming that God’s love is our special property. If so, let us shudder at the thought that Je­ sus is also looking with “anger and deep sadness” at our hard­ness of heart.

© Copyright Bible Diary 2019

Gospel: Mark 2:23-28
One Sabbath he was walking through grain fields. As his disciples walked along with him, they began to pick the heads of grain and crush them in their hands. Then the Pharisees said to Jesus, “Look! They are doing what is forbidden on the Sabbath!” And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did in his time of need; when he and his men were very hungry? He went into the House of God, when Abiathar was High Priest, and ate; the bread of offering, which only the priests are allowed to eat, and he also gave some to the men who were with him.” Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath.”

Reflections
“The Son of Man is master even of the Sabbath.”
As Jesus travels the country­ side, he constantly encounters self­ appointed guardians of True Religion who upbraid him for some transgression. From their point of view these are not small matters. They believe that Israel’s deliverance—the very coming of the Messiah—depends on faithful observance of the law. They seem to forget how the prophets railed against an approach to religious practice that focused on external piety and obedience while mean­ while failing to honor the highest commandments of justice and mercy. Their very punctiliousness about the Law prevented them from recognizing the presence of the Messiah in their midst. Jesus exemplifies a different hierarchy of values. As he points out, with a reference to King Da­vid (not in every sense the best character witness), the law does not exist for its own sake, but to serve a higher purpose. Today’s guardians of True Religion some­ times miss this point. They may rail against any deviation from liturgical rules and overlook the higher commandment. As Mo­ther Maria Skobtsova, an Ortho­dox nun and martyr, said, “The meaning of the liturgy must be translated into life. It is why Christ came into the world and why he gave us our liturgy.”

© Copyright Bible Diary 2019

Gospel: Mark 2:18-22
One day, when the Pharisees and the disciples of John the Baptist were fasting, some people asked Jesus, “Why is it, that both the Pharisees and the disciples of John fast, but yours do not?” Jesus answered, “How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the day will come, when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast. No one sews a piece of new cloth on an old coat, because the new patch will shrink and tear away from the old cloth, making a worse tear. And no one puts new wine into old wine skins, for the wine would burst the skins, and then both the wine and the skins would be lost. But new wine, new skins!”

Reflections
“How can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them?”
John the Baptist was famous— both among his disciples and his enemies—for his asceticism and self­denial. He dressed in animal skins and lived on a diet of honey and locusts. For many people that is the standard by which to recog­nize a holy man of God.How is it that Jesus and his followers set such a different example—not only eating and drinking, but attending wedding feasts and dining with sinners and tax collectors? Jesus himself compares his entourage to a wed­ding party, with himself in the role of bridegroom. It suggests a kind of joyous festivity that surrounded him, and it goes some way to explaining why so many felt drawn to follow. As Pope Fran­cis says, there are Christians who seem to live in an endless Lent without Easter. Jesus represents “new wine,” which can’t simply be poured into old frameworks and ways of thinking.There is a time for mourning. But religious practice that is ex­pressed entirely in penitence and sadness would seem to miss out on the joy of the Good News! As Julian of Norwich, an English mystic, exclaimed, “The worst has already happened and been re­ paired!”

© Copyright Bible Diary 2019