predication.net

Parents and educators are asked to warn their charges whom they are educating of possible evil. From the warned can often be heard: Nothing can happen to me. I have my mind, experience, etc.

But we must remember that also in the sphere of faith; it is laid on the heart of all who have an influence on young people and the growth of trust in others in general, to encourage them to be good regularly and to guide them in such a way as to keep them from spiritual harm.

In the Gospel, the Lord Jesus Himself seizes upon this duty and warns His apostles, saying, “Take heed, and beware of the leaven of Herod.” (Mk. 8:15).

Jesus often uses a simile in His words to emphasize His words and warnings. Today it is “leaven.” We know that leaven is there to give flavor to the flour. If the leaven were terrible, it would not make the bread palatable but spoil it.

So, also have a moral doctrine to give good direction to human activity. But the insincere morals and hypocrisy of the Pharisees hurt souls. In addition to this, the fun and general sinfulness of Herod had a directly corrupting influence on the minds of men. These are harsh words addressed to the apostles, who were concerned about what they put into their mouths when they forgot to take bread with them. They had but one, and there were thirteen of them. The apostles often did not immediately understand Jesus’ warnings, and perhaps one could even sense the hardness in their demeanor. For they had seen so many strange events in which they had had a direct part, such as the multiplication of the loaves in the wilderness, the several healing, and the like. From this alone, they could realize that Jesus was the Messiah, the expected shepherd of the nation who had come to take care of the nation. They could see that Jesus was interested in the nation; he cared for it. Jesus is not just bringing material bread to the nation but also, above all, the bread of salvation. And because of their lack of understanding, Jesus admonishes them. And the Pharisees were only asking for miracles. They tempted him to show them a sign, and they believe. Therefore Jesus answers them: “This generation will not receive a sign.” (Mk 8:12). And Jesus walked away from them.
The behavior of the Pharisees can quickly sway the apostles. And Jesus, like God, also knows that every man from the sin of his grandparents has within him a tendency to unbelief, which can manifest itself in a superficiality to duty, a carelessness about the commands given. Therefore, we must realize that we cannot rid ourselves of this by hard perseverance and devotion to Christ.

Often we find that we learn from our own mistakes, only to our detriment. Our faith must not be based on something exceptional like the Pharisees who only wanted to see miracles. Nor must our faith be based on feelings. We see John the Baptist speaking out strongly against Herod and saying bluntly, “You must not live with your brother’s wife!” (Mk 6:19).

In faith, feelings must go aside. Alternatively, one must keep them under the control of reason. So, the author of the words of the hymn to the Eucharist instructs us: My sight and my taste would deceive me, but my hearing – that is, my reason – teaches me to have a firm faith…
Jesus wants us to have confidence in him, for he is still the same yesterday and today. Though today we see him only under the sacramental emblems of bread and wine, yet he is the same God, Jesus Christ, who in the wilderness multiplied five loaves to five thousand.

We are not only to be aware of this fact, but we must put it into practice in our lives. The yeast of unbelief is also in our environment and wants to penetrate our souls. A severe and powerful weapon is vigilance and caution.

A man remembers his childhood when his mother taught him to pray. She devoted herself to his soul. His father tolerated his wife went to church, but without conviction. Like every other child whose mother was committed, the child took her words seriously and enriched his life about his parents. One day, he overheard his parents arguing. The mother scolded the father to be an example to his children. And then, thinking that the children were asleep, he began to say all sorts of evil things about the faithful, the priests, the Church. The boy heard it all. He didn’t quite understand it, yet something remained in him that came out years later. His father had once, already as an adult, scolded him about something. And then the son repeated all this after his father…

Let us beware of bad examples, and let us take care that we do not set a lousy standard by our actions.

St. Valentin was Christian bishop who lived in Rome in the 3 rd century. He died a martyr’s death in 14, February 269. He became the patron saint of lovers because, according to one legend , he helped one to marry against the will of their parents. We celebrate St. Valentine’s Day, a world for God preached love for people.

How often do we ask for something from someone, and our requests and petitions go unheard, like the request of the Pharisees and scribes in today’s Gospel? Why is this so? Didn’t Jesus want to perform a miracle, or couldn’t he? Indeed, this is not why Jesus refused their request.

Jesus knew their intention. He knew that they had come to tempt him: “They tempted him by asking him for a sign from heaven!” (Mk 8:11)

With what intentions do we go to other people? Do our intentions and motives even matter? They certainly are. Our actions and their value before God depend on our intentions. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Through pure intention, which consists in focusing on one’s true goal, we strive to find and fulfill God’s will in all things.” (CCC 2520). We will step back and look at it more closely from this definition. The pure intention could be defined as the motive that leads us to do something good. A reason that is not for my benefit but seeks the good of the one I will help.

In other words: looking at the problem of others through their eyes. To see not oneself but one’s neighbor. Think not of the good of self, but of the brother or sister who needs a helping hand. To focus on the right goal is to put God first in your life. God is to be number one. To seek God’s will and to do it is the duty of each one of us.
Let us open ourselves to God. Let us let God into our lives and not fear Him. With him, we can do all things. We need to trust him and let him lead us. He will show us the way and direct us. We will purify our intentions with him and begin to know his will.

A great example of good seeking is the Old Testament, King Solomon. Young Solomon had many desires: wealth, military power, fame, prosperity, long life, happiness… But when God asked him for one thing – when He asked him for his highest good, he wished for wisdom from above. Solomon rightly reasoned that it was just such a gift that would bring him the fulfillment of all his other desires. And God thus answered his choice: “Because thou hast desired this thing, and hast not desired long age, nor hast desired riches, nor hast desired the life of thine enemies, but hast desired to understand, that thou mayest understand the law, I will do to thee according to thy desire: Behold, I will give thee a wise heart and understanding; so that there was none like thee before thee, neither shall there be any like thee after thee. But I will also give thee that which thou hast not asked, both riches and glory so that there shall be none like thee among kings all thy days.” (1 Kings 3:11-13).

Let us examine our intentions; God is with us and helps us.

As you know, one of the basic needs of every human being, apart from sleeping and drinking, is to receive food. This means that no one, no matter how much he wants to, can live without food because everybody, to function well, to be healthy and fit, must be nourished by something. But what about the soul of man? Must it also be raised with something to be able to function and to remain healthy and fit?

In today’s Gospel, we hear the words: “Who can satisfy them with bread here in the wilderness, and how?” (Mk 8:4).
They are words uttered by Christ’s disciples as a kind of wonder at Christ’s same reasoning, that he could not just let go of so many people who had followed him so far without feeding them with something. “But how?” the disciples ask. How can so many people be fed on seven loaves and a pair of fish? The answer was given. When Christ took the loaves and fishes, he gave thanks, blessed, broke, and gave, and they all ate and were filled.
But as in every gospel, we need to see in this event not just some description of the feeding of the multitude; we need to know the theology, the spirituality of it above all. And what does it consist of?

The Evangelist Mark wants to tell us one important thing with this description, that everyone who follows Christ, who follows him and obeys his word, will live and will never starve, spiritually starve, because Christ satisfies with food that not so much the body, but precisely the soul revives, heals and strengthens.
Yes, not the body, but the soul, because we can nourish the body even without Christ, but not the soul…. soul. Man cannot feed his soul alone, but only with Christ, for the soul, to be healthy and fit, does not need bodily food as the body does, but it needs spiritual food. But this, like food of the flesh, man cannot get by himself at any time and in any place, nor can he buy it, but it can only be obtained. It can only be accepted as a gift and grace from God if one follows and walks after Christ.

Well, let us consider, how is our soul? Are we taking care of it? Are we nourishing it with that spiritual food that Christ gives? Do we keep it healthy and fit, or do we care only for the body and forget the soul? Whether and how we care for the soul is seen in our very attitude towards it and whether and how we care for it. The approach to Holy Confession and especially to Holy Communion. But let us remember that it is not the health of the body, but the health of the soul that is most important in the life of each one of us.

The soul, like the body, is also an integral part of us, a part of our life. For without it, as without the body, we cannot exist. Although it is invisible, it is within us, and therefore it is also our task to care for it, just as we care for our bodies daily. Let us not neglect it, but let us follow Christ and walk after Him, for where Christ is, there is also spiritual food, the food of the soul. He is the broken food and given daily, even at this Holy Mass, because He wants our body to be fed and healthy and our soul.

Let us, therefore, come to Holy Communion often, not out of compulsion, but out of love for Christ and out of a desire for life and a healthy soul. Therefore, let us also pray at this Mass to follow Christ daily and receive his body as typically as possible as spiritual food for the soul.

Love is an implacable and endless war of extermination against
one’s selfishness. The antithesis, then, is the well-meaning, that which
the betrothed consider good for themselves. Because what my wife and I feel good about can be two different things. Praying every day for the gift of love is a sage thing to do. The relationship cannot survive independently; it needs to be nurtured by prayer every day. Constituent prayer, the French call it priers continually, in the tradition of the Eastern Fathers, coupled with the invocation of the name of Jesus, shelters love from storms and protects it from me, from my selfishness.
I don’t think man and woman are complementary. Instead, I think they walk hand in hand in their separate universes. Zoologist Robert Trivers looks at men and women as two fundamentally different biological species. We are different. Men think differently, and women feel, in their way, different from men. Both methods have their laws and their logic. That’s why, despite the books about Mars and Venus, sometimes men think they’re from Earth and that woman is from somewhere on Mars. But just because men don’t see the logic in women’s reasoning doesn’t mean that logic doesn’t exist: it means they don’t see it. It is remarkable how a man and woman are filled with goodwill and mutual love in their relationship and how they unwittingly inflict pain and unpleasant injuries on each other. It’s as if an alien astronaut had come to Earth, and we were very carefully trying to determine how to show our friendship. Or how, when an ethnographer tries to contact a new tribe in a hitherto undiscovered country. A bouquet of roses is a sign of love in a man’s world, but what does it mean in a girl’s world? Won’t a girl see a well-meaning joke as a declaration of war? Will she does not understand an offer of an escort home as a sovereign violation of her independence?

Her yes sometimes means yes, and other time’s no. Similarly, her no sometimes means no, and other times yes. Sometimes she says yes and no in a single sentence and means yes, and sometimes she means no. Sometimes both yes and no mean – of course, for all intents and purposes – yes and no. Sometimes yes and no compromise decide for yourself. Like in Chinese, the accent matters a lot and the circumstances. It has its logic. Sometimes a woman speaks in allusions that she considers transparent. Sometimes, as in military ciphers, the text means something other than what the word sequence implies, and inside the sentence, there is another sentence. Sometimes there is an anxious cry hidden in two calmly spoken announcement sentences, sometimes a plea and sometimes a message. As in folk songs, the melody is often a much more important statement than the text itself, which serves as the scaffolding of the piece. We men often remain in the first plane of words and fail to perceive the more critical second meaning hidden within. Women speak a different language, and it confuses men that their language in its various uses the same vocabulary and the same grammar. “You don’t understand me at all,” the women then point out, and the men have no that they remember precisely and everything, the woman said. Sometimes the mood changes without demonstrable cause, and similarly like a stricken airplane sinking and sinking until the final explosion in the sea. The men don’t understand and are surprised to learn from the girls that they don’t either.

Behaviorists regard man as a kind of black box: we know inputs and outputs, but we don’t know what’s going on inside. It is in this way
many times men think of women. How else is it possible that a girl, with all her calm courage, patient endurance of suffering, hard as steel, is simultaneously so vulnerable and delicate that a man feels he is holding in his arms the most fragile creature in the universe?
I find it ridiculous that marriage strategists with manuals, survival courses, and stupid slogans about love pass through the stomach. Whatever the saints were, they weren’t cynical and never had the humor of the kind. I don’t need a hot meal to live, don’t be angry, nor a regular diet, nor a life with a full pension, but I need to love and be loved, or I’ll die. A man struck by love is always in some way bowed out, as I ask many lovers when I ask them to pray incessantly for the beloved soul? A ceaseless prayer, priére continually, for the soul, which I have been entrusted to accompany, passes before waking up, as memory fills all the important and unimportant moments in the day, study and work, lessons and breaks, waiting for the bus and waiting in all the queues of the day; it is in the conversations and the creation and accompanies us at dusk and when we fall asleep. It continues in sleep. Invoking Jesus’ holy name is the simplest way of constant prayer. If an attentive heart humbly repeats it often, this invocation does not dissipate in “muchness” but preserves the word and bears fruit with perseverance.

Even if we don’t directly say to someone, or implement in ourselves, the words, the advice “Open up!”, we can often encounter this and similar thoughts.

Is the child closing up to you? Not listening? He does it his way. Many times it is not until it is too late that we realize how much effort, how much energy the people around us have put in to help us, and we have ignored them, not listened to them, and not respected their advice, their goodwill to help us. The doctor needs us to cooperate with him in his treatment. A teacher will teach more to those who want to learn. The athlete knows that it pays to listen and follow the coach’s words.

And that is why in the spiritual life, too, we need to reflect on our openness to God. Let us ask ourselves: How do we listen to the voice of God in our conscience? What do the words of the confessor mean to us…? Do we reflect on the word of God, the Gospel, or the sermon of the priest? To open ourselves to God, to welcome God into our lives, is for each person not only a step forward but often a mile, a mile…

The deaf of the Gospel, when he fulfilled Jesus’ call, “Effeta,” which means, “Open yourself!” At that moment, his ears were opened, and he loosed his fettered tongue and spoke rightly” (Mk 7:34-35).

Jesus had compassion for the suffering. The words of the prophet Isaiah were fulfilled, “Say to the fainthearted: “Take heart! Behold your God!… He will come and save you.” Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be opened. The lame shall leap like a deer, the tongue of the dumb shall shout for joy.” (Isa. 35:4-5).

The healing of the deaf and dumb speaks of the hope of a person genuinely wanting to communicate with God. How many challenges to our reflection and following. The deaf man was brought in and asked Jesus to lay hands on him. The sick man did not come alone. The ill needed help. It pleases God when we ask Him not only for ourselves but also for those suffering in our neighborhood.

The Gospel says that if we believe Jesus has power, why not seek him out? When we are sick, and others care about us, let us be led to Jesus. If faith is even as small as a mustard seed, why not entrust ourselves wholly and completely to Jesus?
In baptism, Jesus touched our souls. Baptism is not just a remembrance but a daily engagement with Christ. Those who knowingly and willingly sin after baptism need to regain their broken friendship with God in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Sin makes us deaf and dumb and blind, lame, and dead. Jesus wants us to be his brothers and sisters again, living witnesses, teachers of his good news, and spreaders of his word. That is why he reminds us, “Effata,” which means, “Open!” (Mk 7:34) Jesus rightly asks the Christian to want to open himself to him, to be able to open himself to him, to hear his words, and to speak them.

Today is the moment to ask me what kind of Christian am I? Am I able to listen to Christ, accept his demands, or am I just asking, pleading, commanding God, or imposing my will? Am I not wiser than God? Recall how we listen to God’s word; do I ponder and meditate on God’s word? Am I opening myself up to God’s word? Jesus said to the Hebrews: “He who is of God hears the words of God.” (Jn. 8:47). Don’t these words also belong to us?
Suppose after Mass someone asks you, “Who preached the sermon?” Suppose someone were to say XY priest. Such an answer is not entirely true. A proper response should be: “XY priest and I preached the sermon.” Why is such an answer correct..? When we hear the Word of God, we believers are obligated to open ourselves to the Word of God. We are to open ourselves to God’s word. “Taffeta,” which means, “Open up!” (Mk 7:34). Let us consider – when we do not open ourselves when listening to God’s word, the preacher’s words may be wise, faithful, precious, but nothing will change inside us. Why did we come to Mass in the first place if we wanted to avoid opening ourselves to God…? The state of our soul also depends on us how we cooperate with God. Why is it that perhaps we have not heard God for a long time, and why do we not know how to speak to God? Let us not look for fault with God. Let us not say that Jesus does not love us. We come to Mass and some even to the sacraments, but we want to avoid opening up to God. We are full of “ourselves,” and we would like to avoid hearing God. We may confess our sins, but we do not make amends. We live in the same sins without trying to change our circumstances, leave the acquaintance, and leave the place where friendship with God is lost; we are unwilling to respond more actively to the voice of God within us, to the teachings of the Church. If we do not open ourselves to God, as he rightly asks of us, we will leave, so to speak, “empty” even today.

To the priest after Holy Confession, the parishioner with tears in his eyes says: “Please pray for me to change.” The priest promised help. A year later, again after confession, the parishioner, equally moved, asks the pastor, “Please pray for me.” The priest asks the parishioner to help him carry the table from one room to another. Once they were holding the table and the parishioner was dragging the table into the other room, the priest dropped it to the floor at once. After the priest has dropped the table on the floor several times in this way, the parishioner says: “Mr. Parish Priest, we are not going to move the table like this.” The priest just waited for these words and said: “You are asking me to pray for you to change. I am praying, but after a year, you have not yet done your part to change.”

An incident is related to the Greek orator Demosthenes: he once spoke forcefully to the Athenians about the need and importance of love for the city. He said sparingly and used many beautiful words. But the Athenians did not listen to him. Some yawned, others dozed, others underestimated the meaning of his words, and still, others talked. Then Demosthenes stopped speaking and remarked: “Now I will tell you the fable of the ass.” Suddenly there was silence, and all became alarmed, eager to hear the foolish fable of the donkey as if the happiness of Athens depended on it.

It is suitable when we are not like the Athenians. God’s word is necessary for us. And so we accept the invitation, the warning of Jesus when we have already come and perhaps been brought. Jesus takes us aside from everyone, touches our ears and mouths, and says to us, “Effeta,” which means, “Open!” (Mk 7:34). Our Lady says that “there was no one heard who took refuge under her protection and begged her help … that he would not be heard.” We know of Our Lady the words that “she kept all (Jesus’) words in her heart.” (Lk 2:51).

May our response of faith be demonstrated by works. “What we are speaking louder than what we say.” (Emerson) Our life as Christians is a calling card of our faith. Words convince few, but the only argument is our life. Verba moment, exempla tara hunt. About Jesus the crowd – when he taught, he did signs and wonders, he spoke: “He does all things well: he gives hearing to the deaf and speech to the dumb.” (Mk 7:37).

The father can do everything when the child does not want to cooperate. Only man has a reason and free will. A doctor can be a worldly expert when the patient does not do his bidding. God loves everyone, but He makes our happiness, both natural and eternal, conditional upon our being willing and open to His Word. What shall we answer? Let our answer be to the effect that we no longer want to linger in one place, but we want to receive God’s word, we want to be open to God’s word, and we want to grow in faith, hope, and love for God.

Thank you, God, for the reminder to open ourselves to your Word. This is what I want to ask you for today.

1. Just for today, I will try to get through the day without wanting to solve the problem of my life all at once.

2. Only on this day will I be as careful as possible to conduct myself with dignity, not to criticize anyone, and certainly not to try to correct or correct anyone… only myself.

3. Only on this day will I be happy in the certainty that I am made for happiness… Not only in the world to come, but in this world as well.

4. Only on this day will I adapt to circumstances without circumstances adapting to my desires.

5. Only on this day will I devote ten minutes of my time to a good reading. Good literature is as necessary for the spiritual life as nutrition is necessary for the physical life.

6. Only on this day will I do a good deed and tell no one about it.

7. Only on this day will I do something that I do not want to do at all. And if perhaps I feel offended, I will be careful that no one will know it.

8. Only on this day will I prepare a particular program. I may not keep it exactly, but I will set it. And I will guard against two mistakes: rashness and indecision.

9. Only on this day will I firmly believe that God’s good providence cares for me as if there were no one in the world but me. I will consider this even if circumstances indicate otherwise.

10. I will not be afraid this day alone. And especially, I will not be scared to believe in goodness and rejoice in all that is beautiful.

It is given to me to do good for twelve hours; if I think I should do it all my life, it would probably take courage.

For example, if you’re experimenting using lab mice, it’s recommended that a janitor or cleaning lady divide them into a test group and a control group you’re experimenting using lab mice; for example, it’s recommended that a janitor or cleaning lady divide them into a test group and a control. This is because it has been found that when you root for a hypothesis, you choose, even subconsciously, experimental mice that are more active and viable – and this can bias your results.
It means that the pursuit of objectivity at all costs is prevalent. Thanks to our penchant for analysis, we’ve also made it this far in science. When a researcher wants to know something about the structure of an atom or even smaller particles than an atom, he tries to bombard them with a cyclotron. A physicist jokingly compared these experiments to a car that you would like to know how it works but has no choice but to run it violently into a wall, wait to see what falls out, and then reverse-engineer the engine’s function from those parts.
In physics and chemistry, the analysis works; in biology, it starts to fail significantly. When I dissect an animal, I get a detailed view of its
of its internal organs, but I do not find out, for example, how it behaves in its natural environment, how it acquires its food, what its courtship rituals are, and so on. Just because I’m an excellent anatomist doesn’t mean that I understand animal life: the advent of ecology and ethology in the twentieth century completely overturned the Enlightenment ideal of the animal as a biomechanism. In medicine and the science of man, the analysis does not work at all – the fact that I can name all the blood vessels and muscles of the human body does not mean that I know who a person is. A person is more than the anatomy of a person.
In theology, then, this approach is utterly pernicious. The European scholar approaches the problem of “God ” as he is accustomed: to look at the subject of analysis from different sides, to try to cut or dissect the object of investigation as far as possible, to see what is inside, and to draw a conclusion. 2 3 Thus we arrive at the definition mentioned above. I believe it is correct, and who knows, perhaps it is helpful to philosophers in their science, but it is useless to us, who ask about God and make sense of things.
Jews look at the issue differently. I am sure you already know that the Jews have the word “God” they dare not utter out of reverence. God is not a philosophical issue for them, but it is above all the God of their history, the one who acts in their nation’s history. “God” is not an abstract God, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Acts of the Apostles, when the deacon Stephen is asked by the Great Council what he believes, he mentions the history of Israel from Abraham to Christ in his speech. The Christian reader yawns in boredom – after all, we already know the stories. But a Jew cannot talk about God. As a philosophical problem, God is not hanging in a vacuum; it is the one that makes up the history of my nation. That’s why there are so many history books in the Old Testament. The books that touch in any way on the history of Israel are vastly outnumbered. Not because the believers have an automatic preference for an account, but the history of the Jews is the history of their relationship with God. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
For the Jew, the question about God is a question about the history of his relationship with God. I, the theological dictionary, am aware of this and devotes the last page to God as a mystery: God is “… the basis of any manifold antagonistic reality and a complete mystery”; and ends with the idea of a personal God: “… a free, living, personal God, who has made Himself known to man in the revelation of salvation through Jesus Christ in this very fullness and undiluted love”. Even if I were to hesitate, how does m according to this definition, for example, God conceive of Him and how love differs in meaning from untempered love, we learn information that is more useful for our purpose than in the introduction to the chapter. Thomas Aquinas preferred to write: We cannot understand what God is like, but only what he is not like, so there is a kind of negative definition of the concept of God.
But all these definitions lead us to something very fundamental: God is unimaginable, a mystery, and beyond our imagination. How incomprehensible are his judgments and inscrutable his ways! Writes St. Paul to the Christians in Rome. Who then is God? Let’s use an example from physics: when in 1913, Niels. God’s model of the atom was a model universally understood. It was a sphere that symbolized the nucleus, protons, and neutrons, and at different distances from the heart, other spheres represented electrons. Like different planets, the electrons circle the middle around the middle orbit of the sun. This model, by the way, m still used in high schools and colleges. But it’s not correct, and Niels Bohr knew it very well, but it is an illustrative model we still use successfully. Is that the right word? – electrons do not move in orderly circular orbits but whirl madly around the nucleus in a kind of endless dance. That’s why we define the so-called orbital as the place where we can find an electron with 95% probability. An electron can be elsewhere, for example, on the second Rom 11:33.
But it is less likely. An orbital is a piece of space. Sometimes it resembles a two-drop; other times, we know of stranger formations. But even with its electron, it is not so simple. We don’t know precisely what an electron is. You demonstrate when you build an experiment to prove that the electron is a material particle. When you set up an investigation to confirm that the electron is a wave, the electron will behave like a wave. But that’s not possible: either something is a material particle, or it’s a wave. Or we are very wrong somewhere. That’s why we talk about the dualistic nature of particles. But we still use Bohr’s atom model because we can imagine things using it. Imagine the right phenomena of quantum chemistry; nobody can, at least not yet. It is similar to several discoveries in twentieth-century physics. 

Like every person, we have rights or claims to certain things in our lives. These are either rights that we acquire during our lifetime or requests that we receive at the moment of conception and therefore, as part of our life, no one can take them away from us. But let’s think about it. What about the claim or right to the kingdom of God? Does every person have it, or do they not have it?

In today’s Gospel, we hear the words: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the puppies. Lord, even puppies eat the crumbs of children under the table.” (Mk 7:27-28).
These words were the words of today’s Gospel dialogue between Christ and the Gentile Syrophoenician woman. But what do these words mean? First of all, it must be said that Jews and Gentiles had no love for each other and that Christ came into this world mainly for the sake of the chosen Jewish people because they were the children of God. Let’s take a closer look at the words Christ used in response to a Gentile woman’s request that He heal her daughter. They are somewhat harsh words, for, in addition to likening the Gentiles to puppies, with these words, He seemed to be saying: “What do you want from me, for you are not of the chosen people, you do not belong to the children of YHWH, and them alone belongs the kingdom of God!” But Christ used these words deliberately. He did not mean to say that he only cared about the Jews because he came for the sake of all people, to bring salvation to all, and to give them a claim to the kingdom of God. Jesus, however, waited to see what the Gentile woman would answer him. And her response? She humbly accepts what Christ has said, but at the same time points out that if the puppies in families are entitled to what falls from the table or the hands of children, even if it is only tiny crumbs, so too are the Gentiles allowed to at least a crumb of the kingdom of God.

So we can see from this Gospel dialogue today that indeed every person has a claim to the kingdom of God, no matter what they are. But not only to the kingdom of God, but also to help, our help. Christ, Himself, gives us an example in this, that we must always help every person if they sincerely ask us to do so, whether they are a Gentile, a homeless person, a gypsy, an enemy, or a neighbor we do not like. But let us think. Are we following in Christ’s footsteps? Do we help those who ask us? And how do we accept or treat those who don’t go to church, who are of another religion, or those who don’t believe in God? Don’t we sometimes alienate them? Don’t we sometimes treat them as the Jews once treated the Gentiles? If so, why? Are they not also children of God? For God created everyone.
To follow in Christ’s footsteps requires, in addition to firm faith, trust, and love, great sacrifice. But not just anyone can do it. Not everyone, like Christ, can accept another, anyone, and help him if he asks for this help, but only he can do it who sees in the other no one else but Christ Himself.

And such was also Mother Teresa. She understood perfectly what Christ asks of each one of us. His example became a daily part of her life, and it showed, for she sacrificed herself as Christ did for others. She came to those who had been alienated by others, to those who had been marginalized, those who no one cared about anymore. She came to their aid. She cared for them, she taught them, she tended their wounds, she built hospitals for them, and she did all of this no matter what kind of person they were because she looked at each one of them as Christ and as a person who was asking for help. And when he asks, that help must be given.

Let us also become like Mother Teresa and thus prove to Christ that he is our model and that we put the example he gave us into practice in our lives.

Let us, therefore, pray at this Holy Mass that during our lifetime, we may not alienate anyone and always be able to welcome any person with love and help anyone who sincerely asks for this help.