Blessed Virgin Mary

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Colossians 1: 21-23

 

 You yourselves were once estranged and opposed to God because of your evil deeds,  

but now God has reconciled you in the human body of his Son through his death, so that you may be without fault, holy and blameless before him.  Only stand firm, upon the foundation of your faith, and be steadfast in hope. Keep in mind the Gos­pel you have heard, which has been preached to every creature under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

Luke 6: 1-5

One Sabbath Jesus was going through a field of grain, and his disciples began to pick heads of grain, crushing them in their hands for food.  Some of the Pharisees asked them, “Why do you do what is forbidden on the Sabbath?”  

Then Jesus spoke up and asked them,  “Have you never read what David did when he and his men were hungry?”  He entered the house of God, took and ate the bread of the offering and even gave some to his men, though only priests are allowed to eat that bread.”  And Jesus added, “The Son of Man is Lord and rules over the sabbath.”

 

Reflection gospel：

“PICK HEADS OF GRAIN… FOR FOOD.”

In his book the Gospel of Life: Following Christ, Together, on the Path to Holiness, Pope Francis described St John Paul Ⅱ’s  notion of the “Paradox of abundance” as the “ [situation] in which there is food for everyone, but not everyone can eat, while waste, excessive consumption and the use of food for other purposes is visible before our very eyes.”

There is, indeed, food for everyone. The Earth produces, In its abundance, all that every form of life needs to survive. Humanity and other living species take their foodstuffs from the Earth. That is why to destroy the ecosystem of the Earth and its biodiversity, and to intervene with its natural processes, is to deprive people, particularly the poor, of their daily sustenance and source of livelihood.

When we consider the imbalance in the distribution and use of the Earth’s resources we might ask: if our present world economic system works for the health and well-being of all the Earth’s living inhabitants and if the progress it claimed to have achieved truly benefit humanity, then why does the poor sector of the world continue to increase and poverty is on the rise; and, why does the gap between the poor and the rich of the would continue to widen.