September 4
Saturday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Give a Mass Offering
Mass Intentions
9:00 AM – Joseph & Marly Farnett / Family
Prayer for Spiritual Communion
My Jesus, I believe that you are present in the most Blessed Sacrament. I love You above all things and I desire to receive You into my soul. Since I cannot now receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace You as if You were already there, and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.
Readings
First Reading
Colossians 1:21-23
Brothers and sisters: You once were alienated and hostile in mind because of evil deeds; God has now reconciled you in the fleshly Body of Christ through his death, to present you holy, without blemish, and irreproachable before him, provided that you persevere in the faith, firmly grounded, stable, and not shifting from the hope of the Gospel that you heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, am a minister.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalms 54:3-4, 6 and 8
R. (6) God himself is my help.
O God, by your name save me,
and by your might defend my cause.
O God, hear my prayer;
hearken to the words of my mouth.
R. God himself is my help.
Behold, God is my helper;
the Lord sustains my life.
Freely will I offer you sacrifice;
I will praise your name, O LORD, for its goodness.
R. God himself is my help.
Gospel Acclamation
John 14:6
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord;
no one comes to the Father except through me.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Luke 6:1-5
While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions?” Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”
“God himself is my help.”
Reflection
In our world, there are a lot of people who would look at the mistakes of others and spend their time pointing them out rather than looking at their own mistakes and trying to change themselves. The Pharisees were those kind of people. They see Jesus’ followers walking through the fields on the Sabbath and picking the grains of wheat off of the plants and eating them. They point this out to Jesus as a violation of one of the 613 tenets of the law of Moses, implying that they are engaging in acts of evil. Jesus’ response is a lesson in how God works that we can all learn from.
Jesus points out that the kind of behavior that the Pharisees are condemning has been done by some of the greatest figures in the history of the faith. If it is okay for David and his followers to eat the bread of the presence, then why is it not okay for Jesus’ followers to pick and eat wheat seeds? What Jesus is pointing out, and what the Pharisees seem to be missing, is that the work of the Kingdom of God is the most important thing that can be done. If it is necessary to find food on the Sabbath in order to get that work done, then it is okay with God.
The rigid way that the Pharisees interpret the laws of God is the problem, not the behavior of the disciples. It is important for us to be able to see the Kingdom of God as a place of tolerance and acceptance, rather than seeing it as a place of narrowness of thinking and acting.
Peace,
Deacon Dare
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