Monday of week 2 of the year
January 18th, 2010
Mark 2: 18-22
John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting, and people came and said to Jesus “Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast but your disciples do not fast? “
The controversy here concerns fasting. The people questioned Jesus as to why John the Bap’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast and his disciples do not.
This leads to Jesus’ identification of himself as the messianic “Bridegroom”
and the claim that his public ministry is an unique time.
Jesus said to them, “The wedding guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them,
can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.”
Prayer
Prayer :Lord, lead us in Faith to follow Jesus’ compassion and love.
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Just a Thought
Hope
John XXIII, referred to as the ‘caretaker Pope’, realising the widening gap between the Church and the world of his day, wrote: “An old world is disappearing. Another one is being formed, and with this I am trying to conceal some good seed or other that will have its springtime, even if it is somewhat delayed, and comes after I’m dead.”
Thomas Merton writes: “One must not give in to defeatism and despair: just as one must hope for life in a mortal illness which has been declared incurable.”
Even when dark clouds surround us, even when everything appears to be falling apart, we must continue to believe for a better future. Whatever the problem, there is a way forward.
So, my hope is in God alone because I believe in him; this is my faith. It is in him I put my faith and that faith, my belief in God’s love for me and all his creation, is the bedrock in which like an anchor, I put my hope. Together with that hope and faith is my love and fidelity in responding to that God in whom I live and move and have my being. In him I place my hope.
“Hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul” (Heb 6:15-19).
