Gospel: September 7, 2024
(Saturday)
22nd Week in Ordinary Time
Psalter: Week 2 / (Green/ White)
Blessed Virgin Mary
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 145: 17-18, 19-20, 21
The Lord is near to all who call upon him.
1st Reading: 1 Corinthians 4: 6b-15
Learn by this example, not to believe yourselves superior by siding with one against the other. How, then, are you more than the others? What have you that you have not received? And if you received it, why are you proud, as if you did not receive it?
So, then, you are already rich and satisfied, and feel like kings, without us! I wish you really were kings, so that we might enjoy the kingship with you!
It seems to me, that God has placed us, the apostles, in the last place, as if condemned to death, and as spectacles for the whole world, for the angels as well as for mortals.
We are fools for Christ, while you show forth the wisdom of Christ. We are weak, you are strong. You are honored, while we are despised. Until now we hunger and thirst, we are poorly clothed and badly treated, while moving from place to place. We labor, working with our hands. People insult us and we bless them, they persecute us and we endure everything; they speak evil against us, and ours are works of peace. We have become like the scum of the earth, like the garbage of humankind until now.
I do not write this to shame you, but to warn you, as very dear children. Because, even though you may have 10,000 guardians in the Christian life, you have only one father; and it was I who gave you life in Christ through the gospel.
Gospel: Luke 6: 1-5
One Sabbath Jesus was going through the field of grain, and his disciples began to pick heads of grain crushing them in their hands for food. Some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why do you do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?” Then Jesus spoke, “Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry?” He entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the offering and even gave some to his men, though only priests are allowed to eat that bread.” And Jesus added, “The Son of Man is Lord and rules over the Sabbath.”
Reflection: “Lord of the Sabbath”
The gift of faith is part and parcel of the new life we have received from Jesus. This same gift of faith helps us to discern well between a life lived by mere compliance to what the letters of the law demand and a life guided by the very spirit of the law. Love is the spirit of God’s law. The spirit of the law impels us to always consider other people’s well-being. Love, the spirit of God’s law, is what enables us to be more compassionate. It makes us more understanding of what other people are going through. It reminds us not to judge other people too quickly but rather always check on our “holier-than-the-other” tendency. In today’s Gospel, Jesus’ disciples were accused of violating the Sabbath law. They picked up heads of grain and crushed these heads of grain in their hands so that they could have something to it. It was forbidden to do such thing on a Sabbath. They did it because they were hungry. For Jesus, what mattered more than mere compliance to the law was the love and concern for others. The Pharisees failed to see what mattered more than the letters of the law.
