Blessed Virgin Mary 

*** 1st Reading ***

1 Corinthians 4:6b-15

Brothers and sisters,

you forced me to apply these comparisons to Apollos and to myself.  Learn by this example not to believe yourselves superior by siding with one against the other. How then are you more than the others? What have you that you have not received? And if you received it, why are you proud, as if you did not receive it?

 So, then, you are already rich and satisfied, and feel like kings without us! I wish you really were kings, so that we might enjoy the kingship with you!  It seems to me that God has placed us, the apostles, in the last place, as if condemned to death, and as spectacles for the whole world, for the angels as well as for mortals.

We are fools for Christ, while you show forth the wisdom of Christ. We are weak, you are strong. You are honored, while we are despised. Until now we hunger and thirst, we are poorly clothed and badly treated, while moving from place to place.

We labor, working with our hands. People insult us and we bless them, they persecute us and we endure everything; they speak evil against us, and ours are works of peace. We have become like the scum of the earth, like the garbage of humankind until now.

 I do not write this to shame you, but to warn you as very dear children. Because even though you may have ten thousand guardians in the Christian life, you have only one father; and it was I who gave you life in Christ through the Gospel.

 

Ps 145:17-18, 19-20, 21

The Lord is near to all who call upon him.

 

**** Gospel ****

Luke 6:1-5

One Sabbath Jesus was going through the corn fields 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, “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.”

 

Gospel Reflection

When we see movies about royal families, they appear lifeless like robots and puppets. They are slaves to people trying to protect and preserve the throne’s grace and dignity.

Palace managers appear like the actual rulers of the palace and even of the kingdom. They can scold a queen for not wearing an appropriate coat. They can cancel a king’s meeting with poor subjects if they sense threat to health and security.

The monarch is not free to function as king or queen. The same anxiety inflicts the Pharisees in their effort to protect and preserve God’s dignity. Even if they give in to the claim that Jesus is one with God, they would dictate what a God-like behavior is.

Hence, Jesus’ free and creative manifestation of God’s compassion is blocked by artificial measures like Sabbath rituals. Jesus insists God is far greater than all these regulations and rituals.