All-knowing and/but Loving Saviour!

WORD 2day: Saturday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 14, 2023: Hebrews 4: 12-16; Mark 2: 13-17 

God is all knowing and we all know it and we know all about it! In spite of knowing all about us, our weaknesses and our faults, our limitations and our failures, God loves us! That is something that we can never understand to the full... God's love is bountiful and God's mercies never cease!

God loves us not because we deserve that love but because we need that love. God's mercy is given us not because we are worthy of it but because it is God's nature to be merciful. The Word is the epitome of God's merciful love, a love without conditions, a love beyond criteria, a love that fills a person and challenges him or her to total conversion!

With absolutely no demands this love leads one to transformation. All that we need to do is dispose ourselves favorably towards this love and surrender ourselves to it. It is like the medical check up that we go to these days, called the Master check-up! You go, and you say nothing: they do the entire analysis, a comprehensive one and let you know, what is alright and what isn't. They give you the possibility of consulting a specialist and even a prescription of medicine - it all depends on you to take it or not!

That is what happens to our Spiritual self too when we dispose ourselves and surrender to the Word - the Word does a quick comprehensive analysis and reveals to us what is good and what is not, prescribing to us the changes we need to make. It is left to us to work on ourselves! The unbelievable fact that underlies all this is the Saviour, the Lord, the High priest whom we have: all knowing, but at the same time ever-loving Saviour

Doing all that we can!

WORD 2day: Friday, 1st week in Ordinary time

January 13, 2023: Hebrews 4:1-5,11; Mark 2: 1-12

Doing all that one can is not a strange mindset or life style these days. There are people who do all that they can for a lot of things that they wish to achieve. And there are so many things today for which the people are ready to do all that they can. The Word today invites us too, to do all that we can - but for what and for whom?

Do all you can to reach that place of rest, invites the letter to the Hebrews. And the Gospel presents to us those persons who did all that they can to reach that paralytic man to Jesus, so that Jesus could heal him. Doing all you can... that is the call today! 

As we alrady said, people are ready today to do all that they can for themselves and for their own goals... they manipulate, they compromise, they adjust, they give up, they give in, they cheat, they plot, they even kill in order to achieve their ends - regardless of whether they are religious or irreligious, whether they are lay or consecrated, whether already living a comfortable life or not! This is the sense of 'do-all-you-can' that the world today upholds!

The Word gives us a different picture instead: do all you can to receive the rest that God has prepared for you - that alone is eternal, everything else is passing. The gospel challenges us: do all you can for others, for your neighbours, for those in need and those who are suffering, for those who are miserable and desperate to find the Lord - that is the unfailing way to the peace, that the Word of God indicates to us. Yes, for that eternal rest and for those who are in need around you, do all you can!