Wednesday, March 17
Patrick, Bishop & Missionary of Ireland (461)
Psalms 101, 109:1-4(5-19)20-30, 119:121-144
Mark 8: 14-21
The Pharisees have said to Jesus that they have no bread to give the people. They have challenged Him following the miracle of the feeding of the multitude and now they profess their own ineptitude. Their words have a deeper truth than they are aware of. They mean this literally; Jesus points out their spiritual emptiness. The Pharisees have lost their calling to offer the people God's truth. They can only exist by God's grace but by Jesus' time they are invested in their power and in their fear. They are prevented by their own choices from knowing Him and cannot even recognize the significance of the numbers twelve and seven. Twelve for the people of the covenant and seven for God's perfect love. They miss or ignore what Jesus has offered.
We must be thoughtful, aware of how easily we can miss Jesus' presence and message. We can miss His truth and its challenge because of our own choices to replace His primacy with our self centered and ultimately unfulfilling priorities. Lent is a time to clean out the cluttered closets of our theology and return with clean hearts to the clarity of Jesus' word.
Fr. David Puckett