May the Lord give you peace.
It is on 04th August 2023.
How do we feel when we are rejected?
We celebrate the memorial of St John Mary Vianney, Priest. He is the patron for all the parish priests and a spiritual guide and role model for all the priests. He demonstrated through his simple and holy life that subjective holiness is paramount and important for the objective of the ministry of the Lord. The ordinary and consistently regular little charitable deeds are sufficient to experience God. With profound humility and enormous zeal for God, we can conquer any challenge.
We reflect Leviticus on 23:1, 4-11, 15-16, 27, 34-37; and the Gospel from Matthew 13:54-58.
The first reading shares the importance of celebrating solemn festivals such as the Day of Atonement and the Passover in the life of God’s people. God reminds them of the liturgical celebrations that they needed to celebrate amidst their busy life. It is to thank the Lord for all that God has done and to be sorry for what we could have done in our lives. We need to blend our liturgy with our lives.
God must be the central person of our celebrations, not any individuals who are contributing materially towards such celebrations. The joy of the festival brings harmony and blessings to the community in each situation. Every feast and festival is to teach people the importance and relevance of our faith. If God and Christ are not the focus of our festivals, we need to examine the validity and the need for such celebrations.
The responsorial Psalm praises, “Ring out your joy to God our strength.” (Ps.80:2).
The Gospel reprimands us that frequent familiarity and questions the possibility of faith and healing. Jesus returned to His hometown, but the people did not have faith in Him and did not want to recognize His divinity and the power to heal. When we get used to the most sacred and divine in the presence of Jesus, we relax and not believing what we are familiar with is sufficient to deal with our situations.
Faith and healing are purely God’s reward and gifts to those who have the humility to accommodate the offer of God. God wants to reveal Himself in an ordinary human form. We are to find the links of sacredness and divinity in the ordinary expressions of our lives. May the Lord bless you.