***1st Reading***

Ex 11:10–12:14

  (……) Yahweh spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt and said, This month is to be the beginning of all months, the first month of your year.

Speak to the community of Israel and say to them:

On the tenth day of this month let each family take a lamb,  a lamb for each house.      If the family is too small for a lamb, they must join with a neighbor, the nearest to the house, according to the number of persons and to what each one can eat.

You will select a perfect lamb without blemish, a male born during the present year, taken from the sheep or goats. Then you will keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. On that evening all the people will slaughter their lambs and take some of the blood to put on the doorposts and on top of the doorframes of the doorframes of the houses where you eat.

That night you will eat the flesh roasted at the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.Do not eat the meat lightly cooked or boiled in water but roasted entirely over the fire—the head, the legs and the inner parts. Do not leave any of it until the morning.    If any is left till morning, burn it in the fire.

And this is how you will eat: with a belt round your waist, sandals on your feet and a staff in your hand. You shall eat hastily for it is a passover in honor of Yahweh.On that night I shall go through Egypt and strike every firstborn in Egypt,    men and animals;  and I will even bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt,  I, Yahweh!  The blood on your houses will be the sign that you are there.

I will see the blood and pass over you; and you will escape the mortal plague when I strike Egypt. This is a day you are to remember and celebrate in honor of Yahweh.

It is to be kept as a festival day for all generations forever.

 

**** Gospel ****

 Mt 12:1–8

 It happened that Jesus walked through the wheat fields on a sabbath.      His disciples were hungry, and they began to pick some heads of wheat, to crush and to eat the grain. When the Pharisees noticed this,      they said to Jesus,   “Look at your disciples; they are doing what is prohibited on the sabbath!”

Jesus answered, “Have you not read      what David did when he and his men were hungry?     He went into the house of God, and they ate the bread offered to God, though neither he nor his men had the right to eat it, but only the priests. And have you not read in the law, how on the Sabbath, the priests in the Temple desecrate the Sabbath, yet they are not guilty?

“I tell you, there is greater than the Temple here. If you really knew the meaning of the words: It is mercy I want, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. “Besides the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”

 

Reflection gospel:

“IT IS MERCY I WANT, NOT SACRIFICE.”

Just as Jesus is the historical face of God on Earth, so is he the embodiment of God’s mercy in visible action among humans. Mercy and compassion are central to Jesus’ saving ministry. All his activities are motivated by his merciful love. Mercy is directed toward the good and well being of all creation, humans and nonhumans alike. The absence of mercy leads to different forms of abuse and exploitation of our fellow humans and the natural world. Without it, people will find life burdensome and the world of human affairs replete with injustices.

We are familiar with the seven works of mercy, and we are able to perform them – at times with no difficulty. However, there is another work of mercy that was not explicitly articulated as a work of mercy; and that we might not be aware of for (or if we are, we might not have realized that it is a work of mercy), namely the “care of creation.” In 2016 during the celebration of the “Jubilee of Mercy,” Pope Francis added the care of creation as a modern work of mercy, as the eighth work of mercy.