TODAY'S WORD

By


Fr. Aloysius Santiago sdb
Rector and Parish Priest
Don Bosco Shrine
Lingarajapuram, Bangalore

Mark: 6:31 "He said to them, “Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat."

TODAY'S REFLECTION

Jesus had sent out the twelve to share in his mission. 

According to today’s gospel reading, after returning to him from that mission, he insists that they come away with him to a lonely place all by themselves to rest. 

Jesus knew that the harvest was great and that the labourers were few, but he also appreciated the need for the labourers to rest from time to time. 

There was a time to be active in God’s service and there was a time to step back from activity and rest. 

In this gospel reading, Jesus is consecrating the value of rest. 

God can speak to us when we rest in ways he cannot speak to us when we are active. 

For many of us there are less opportunities to be active in these Covid days, as so many options have been closed off to us. 

These days can be an opportunity to listen more attentively to what the Lord may want to say to us. 

If we have a tendency to be more of a Martha person, this time may be a call to become a little more like her sister Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to him speaking. 

Jesus’ planned time of rest for himself and his disciples never materialized because the crowd, guessing where they were heading, got there ahead of them. 

The gospel reading says that when Jesus saw the crowd, far from being annoyed at this unexpected interruption to his plans, he had compassion on them. 

The word ‘compassion’ in the Bible is from the same root as the word ‘womb’. 

Jesus is portrayed as responding to the crowd with a mother’s anguished love for her struggling children. 

The Lord remains a compassionate presence in all our lives today. 

Often it is when we step back from our various activities to spend quiet time with the Lord that we come to experience more fully his compassionate presence towards us.

The Good Shepherd encourages us… with His Divine Word… by His Compassionate Love

There is indeed a great hunger in the world.

Saint Mother Teresa said: “Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty, than the person who has nothing to eat”

We may be people who hunger for love and acceptance…

Let us go to Jesus, the Supreme Lover of our lives

We may be people dejected and depressed in life…

Let us go to Jesus, the Ultimate Happiness of our lives

We may be people feeling unlucky and ill-fated in life…

Let us go to Jesus, the Absolute Destiny of our lives

In turn, we also meet people who go through such “hunger”…for love, for acceptance, for encouragement, for hope, for basics of life etc…


QUESTIONS TO PONDER

Do I recognise, in the first place, such requirements of needy people?

Does my heart move in loving compassion for them?

Can I be a Good Shepherd, like Jesus, to them?

May the prayer in Heb 13:20-21 (1st Reading) be our personal prayer: “May the God of peace, who brought up from the dead, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, Jesus our Lord, furnish you with all that is good, that you may do His Will.


RESOLUTION

Let's resolve so that He may carry out, in us, what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory, forever, Amen!”

Have a beautiful day and a relaxed weekend. Go bless you.

St. Joseph, universal patron, pray for our mother's whose sacrifices are diluted today.