Startseite
Podcasts
Catholic Daily Reflections Podcast
Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time - Keeping Holy the Sabbath

Tuesday of the Second Week in Ordinary Time - Keeping Holy the Sabbath

Catholic Daily Reflections vor 2 Jahren

0:00

4:42

Podcast

Catholic Daily Reflections

1k Episoden

Short reflections on the Gospel of the day, from My Catholic Life!

Religion & Spiritualität

Podcast aneignen

As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath, his
disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain. At
this the Pharisees said to him, “Look, why are they doing what is
unlawful on the sabbath?” Mark 2:23–24

The Pharisees were greatly concerned about many things that were
distortions of the law of God. The Third Commandment calls us to
“Keep holy the Sabbath Day.” Furthermore, we read in Exodus 20:8–10
that we are not to do any work on the Sabbath but are to use that
day for rest. From this Commandment, the Pharisees developed
extensive commentary on what was permitted and what was forbidden
to do on the Sabbath. They determined that picking the heads of
grain was one of the forbidden actions.

In many countries today, the Sabbath rest has all but disappeared.
Sadly, Sunday is rarely set aside any longer for a day of worship
and rest with family and friends. For that reason, this
hypercritical condemnation of the disciples by the Pharisees is
hard to relate to. The deeper spiritual issue seems to be the hyper
“nitpicky” approach taken by the Pharisees. They were not so much
concerned about honoring God on the Sabbath as they were interested
in being judgmental and condemning. And though it may be rare today
to find people overly scrupulous and nitpicky about the Sabbath
rest, it’s often easy to find ourselves becoming nitpicky about
many other things in life.

Consider your family and those who are closest to you. Are there
things they do and habits they have formed that leave you
constantly criticizing them? Sometimes we criticize others for
actions that are clearly contrary to the laws of God. At different
times, we criticize others on account of some exaggeration of fact
on our part. Though it is important to speak charitably against
violations of the external law of God, we must be very careful not
to set ourselves up as the judge and jury of others, especially
when our criticism is based on a distortion of the truth or an
exaggeration of something minor. In other words, we must be careful
not to become nitpicky ourselves.

Reflect, today, upon any tendency you have in your relationships
with those closest to you toward being excessive and distorted in
your criticism. Do you find yourself obsessing over the apparent
minor faults of others on a regular basis? Try to step back from
criticism today and renew, instead, your practice of mercy toward
all. If you do, you may actually discover that your judgments of
others do not fully reflect the truth of God’s law.

My merciful Judge, give me a heart of compassion and mercy
toward all. Remove from my heart all judgmentalness and
criticalness. I leave all judgment to You, dear Lord, and seek only
to be an instrument of Your love and mercy. Jesus, I trust in
You.

Source of content: catholic-daily-reflections.com

Copyright 2024 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. Used
with permission via RSS feed.