Feeding the Ego!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 5th week in Ordinary time

February 12, 2022: 1 Kings 12: 26-32, 13:33-34; Mark 8: 1-10

We see Jesus feeeding the four thousand people gathered around him, just as he did with the five thousand a little before (Mark 6). He was feeding the people, because they were in need. They did not have anywhere else to go. They had to eat, and Jesus fed them and left that place as soon as he could.

In the first reading too, we find Jeroboam feeding his people - providing them with new gods, new feasts and new rituals and sacrifices, not because they were in need, or not because they had nowhere else to go - but because he did not want them to go elsewhere, and he was in need of assuring himself of his kingship! What was he feeding? The people? No, his own ego!

This is what happens even today - there are those politicians and powerful people who want to feed their own ego. And they create gods: gods of needs, desires and attractions, thus feeding themselves by making the people go after fake absolutes. Much worse, there are religious leaders who create feigned experiences and fabricated explanations, all in the name of feeding the people but in actuality feeding their own egos and their own personal projects, in the name of God!

Jesus seems to give a three-fold criteria in the good we do for others! Are you doing it entirely for the other, or do you have a gain hidden? Are you ready to put yourselves in trouble for the sake of the good of the other, even without they knowing it? Finally, are you ready to move on, after doing good, without waiting to reap the fruits of it, even if it were just a simple gratitude or appreciation? If these criteria fail, I need to seriously raise the question... do I seem to be feeding my own ego?