John 6:22-29 St. Stephen and Witnessing the Faith

Religious faith is a confidence or trust in God.  It is part of our holy covenant with him that obliges us to obedience, loyalty and faithfulness because of his love for us.  In that covenant he makes us his holy peoples.  Our salvation through the cross and Resurrection of Christ brings us new life because of God’s enduring love and mercy for us.  We turn and can firmly say, Jesus I trust in you.

St. Stephen is a witness in our first reading to our shared faith.  He is our brother in Christ.  He bears witness to the Resurrection and faith in God.  Although the simpler path would be to deny God, to not incur the wrath of the Sanhedrin, Stephen upholds the Truth.

In the Gospel Jesus reminds us that we ought to “not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.  For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.”  In other words, be nourished with heavenly food that sustains and nourishes you, and will lead you to everlasting life.  The only things we need to do is believe in him, that is Jesus Christ, whom the Father sends.

Reflection 6:7-15 The Our Father

Prayer is such a gift.  Jesus teaches us to pray the Our Father using a sort of ancient formula. He starts with praising God the Almighty, praising his Holy Name, and he asks for God's will to be done.  Next Jesus teaches us to ask for forgiveness of our sins, and the spiritual nourishment that we need to forgive others.  Then we ask for protection from evil.


When God spoke to Abram after the blessing of the high priest Melchizedek (Genesis 14: 18-20)  he assured Abram and told Abram that He was Abram's shield.  He is our protection from evil.  Through out scripture, from the Old Testament to the New, God is very insistant about praise.  In the Our Father that Jesus gives us today, we are acknowledging how great God is and how small and insignificant we are. We want his will to be done and so recognizing his greatness allows us to be humbled so that we can open our hearts to him, and recognize too how silly it is to try to twist God into doing our will.  God is so good that he sent his only son to die for us, that we may live and have a place in his family as his adopted sons and daughters.  We are looking for reconciliation with the Father so that separated from him we may never be.  That is love reciprocated.

Mark 2: 23-28 Picking the Grains of Wheat

Have you ever judged anyone before learning about their circumstances?  Sometimes this happens to each of us.  This happens within today's Gospel, and even the first reading (1 Sam16:1-13 where Samuel is seeking for God's anointed one, not the strong and mighty, but the young inconspicuous boy, David.) In today's Gospel the scribe watches Jesus picking the wheat and eating it on the Sabbath.  Based on his strict religious laws, he is judging Jesus and the disciples.  The scribe isn't looking at them with the love, compassion and understanding that they laws could originally have held, especially if he understood how hungry they were carrying nothing for food and wandering for days without shelter overhead.  No, the scribe looks upon them in judgement with the rigidity of the old law. 

Jesus on the other hand reminds the scribe of how David long ago ate what was apportioned to the priests even though it was unlawful because he and his companions were hungry.  Then he makes a further statement, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. That is why the Son of Man is lord even over the Sabbath."  The Sabbath is that day set aside for rest and worship.  Yes, what Jesus and the disciples was doing was considered work, but it was necessary so they did not starve.  Jesus' point is that it was necessary for life and thus overruled the law.  The Sabbath was created to remind all of human kind to give thanks to their creator, and that is why the Son of Man, God made manifest is ruler of the Sabbath.