AeinSshi's Fantasies

Gospel Reflections [feb15-18

February 15: Sunday Mark 1:40-45

There’s a true story of a woman in her early fifties she has a renal failure and in the process she was undergoing a twice a week dialysis session. For almost two years they’ve tried looking for a willing donor until they found one: a relative of theirs. For two months they’ve let him stay in their house. Until it was discovered in his blood test that he was infected with Hepatitis B virus and he was not anymore fit to be a kidney donor.

From thereon everything took a dramatic change, suddenly they were cold to him, suddenly he has his own separate plate, glass, spoon and fork for his own exclusive use for they were afraid that he might pass on to them the virus. Having no use of him anymore they soon let go of him simply because he had the hepatitis B virus. This sad story of opportunism and indifference has happened so many times already.

The gospel for this Sunday talks about a leper who went to Jesus and asked Him to heal him of his leprosy. Jesus was not dreadful of the man He instead immediately healed him.

If we were in the place of Jesus we might have treated the man differently, we might have shouted at the man and angrily said: “Don’t come near me for you have a contagious disease!” That’s how some of us are—we dread to be near somebody who has a contagious disease like Hepatitis and Aids.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta the Saint of the Gutters is not like us she is like Jesus for she humbly embraced those who were sick specially those with leprosy. In the process of her humble service to the under privileged she did not mind if she will get sick too. She walked the life of Jesus.

How about us?

February 16: Monday Mark 8:11-13

In the hardship of life nowadays there’s so many who heave a sigh of despair—life seems to get harder by the day. When can we heave a sigh of happiness and relief in return? I don’t know but let us just continue to hold on to our faith, let us continue to hope that amidst the global economic crisis sooner life will be alright for us all. Let us all focus on it.

Jesus had His moments of sighs too and mostly it was sighs of hardship and frustration caused by the Pharisees. But He continued to move forward and He did not lose sight of His salvific mission no matter how hard and frustrating life was for Him.

February 17: Tuesday Mark 8:14-21

Jesus spoke to His disciples with allegorical implication; He said watch out against the leaven of Herod and the Pharisees. Meaning to say: “Beware of their teachings and of what they say.”

If we are discerning enough this is also what Jesus is telling us now albeit allegorically. Beware of what the secular world is dictating us. These are the ff: Greed for money, lustful desires, self-righteousness, boastfulness and many more temporal negative things. These might be the leaven of our lives right now.

The true leaven of our lives is no other than Jesus; let us not lose sight of it.

February 18 Wednesday: Mark 8:22-26

Aside from the literal healing of the blind man, there’s another blindness that Jesus wants to heal. That’s the spiritual blindness of the disciples. They’ve been with Him all along and yet their faith was still in the doldrums (Mark 8:17-18).

This lack of faith can also be said to us; we’ve been following Jesus but when misfortunes and trials come our way. We are easily distracted and we start to question the wisdom of God and forget the many miracles that He has been doing for us in the past.

Let us always be strong with our faith no matter the trials that may come our way.

Gospel Reflections [feb13&14]

February 13 Friday: Mark 7:31-37

The people brought a deaf mute man to Jesus for the reason that they knew that He is a great healer and He will certainly be able to heal the man—so they begged Him to lay His hand on him. Their knowledge of Jesus as a healer was limited because they didn’t know that Jesus also heals emotional sickness.

If only they knew it they could have also begged Jesus to lay His hands on them and heal them of their interior sickness as well. We may not be aware of it but we too are oftentimes interiorly sick. From within our hearts and minds originate lustful and evil thoughts, greed, deceit, envy, our judgemental attitudes and many more. All of these negative emotions emanate within us and this makes us sick too.

Let us pause for a while and sincerely ask Jesus to heal us also of our interior sickness....

February 14 Saturday Mark 8:1-10

Having nothing to eat is an indescribable feeling of being weak; I’ve felt it countless times in my life. You cannot do the things that you want to do. You are so frail and you just want to limit your movement because the more you move the more that you feel the pain of hunger.

There are those who said that the feeling of hunger is all in the mind, you will not feel hunger the moment you deflect your mind to other things. But that is easier said than done.

In the gospel reading; Jesus speaks about the crowd without anything to eat: “My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a great distance."

Then, He asked them, "How many loaves do you have?" They replied, "Seven." He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. Afterwards He gave thanks, broke them and gave them to the disciples to give to the crowd. The same happened to the few fish that they have; the four thousand people were able to eat and they still have seven basketfuls of excess bread and fish.

What lesson does Jesus wants us to learn form the second miracle of the loaves? He simply wants us to learn how to give to the great number of people today going hungry by the day. Let us not give what we have in surplus because we will not truly feel the true joy of giving.

Let us give out of the food that we are about to eat, by doing so we will feel the great joy that Jesus felt when He feed the crowd with only seven loaves and a few fish—this is giving in its purest sense...

Gospel Reflections [feb9-12]

February 9 Monday: Mark 6:53-56

In the past few days until now I’ve noticed that some of the gospel readings are about the healing ministry of Jesus. People flock to Him because they want healings and miracles from God and our gospel reading for today is no different.

People follow Jesus because He heals and cures them all from their ailments. What if Jesus has no power to heal would they still follow Him?

February 10 Tuesday: Mark 7:1-13

The Pharisees were very particular of their custom/tradition they follow it to the letter. So when they saw that Jesus’ disciples ate their meals without washing their hands—they told Jesus about it. They said: “Why do your disciples not follow the tradition of the elders but instead eat a meal with unclean hands?" and Jesus told them: You disregard God's commandment but cling to human tradition." He went on to say, "How well you have set aside the commandment of God in order to uphold your tradition!

We see that Jesus puts more weight on the commandments of God more than their traditions the interior rather than the exterior, the inside conversion rather than the exterior observance of their laws.

The conversion that Jesus desires for us is one that involves a change of our hearts and mindsets—to be more compassionate to the poor for we sometimes judge them by their appearance and their lack of education.

How about the well-heeled? Of course they are always given respect because of their exterior appearance.

February 11 Wednesday: Mark 7:14-23

Jesus said: “Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile." Jesus said this to address the overzealous Pharisees who were very particular in their observance of their laws and traditions. Such as not doing any work during their Sabbath day, which Jesus sometimes violates.

Jesus tells us that what will make us unclean are the evil thoughts that comes out from our hearts and minds our sinful and immoral actions that originate from there. He addressed this to the Pharisees during His time and He is also addressing this to us right now who sometimes acts like modern day Pharisees.

February 12 Thursday: Mark 7:24-30

If we will try to look back on the past days gospel readings we will find out that Jesus has already become so popular and wherever He goes throng of people follow Him because of the healings and miracles that He does for them all.

This is what we must take note of Jesus; He did not take advantage of His popularity; He is always humble and always has that self effacing attitude. When He went to Tyre and entered a house there He wanted no one to know about it. Not because He doesn’t want to be bothered or He doesn’t want the crowd to follow Him again.

Humility and lack of self-importance this is what characterized Jesus’ attitude. So unlike of us who always wants to be recognized, who always want to manipulate those who follow us for our own selfish ends....