One Minute Reflection – 8 March – Friday after Ash Wednesday, Gospel: Matthew 9:14-15 and the Memorial of St John of God (1495-1550)
“Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? The days will come, when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast.”…Matthew 9:15
REFLECTION – “Genuine faith does not make a believer pretentious. Dialogue with God is not a business bargain. External observance of religion wins little favour with God, if it is combined with unfairness to the weak and indifference to the poor. Openness to the indigent is the door to true religion. The world itself changes for the better with the widening of human concern for the poor. Good works multiply on the face of the earth and everyone sees the glory of God in action.
The Gospel presents Jesus as refusing to absolutise ritual fasting. What He expects from His disciples, is that they remain faithful to the mission He is about to give them, even at great sacrifice. It will make evidently greater demands of them than mere ritual fasting. They should be prepared. Jesus is introducing a new set of values of immense worth, for which the old order of things must make way.”…Archbishop Thomas Menamparampil SDB
PRAYER – Lord God, bestow a full measure of Your grace upon us, who seek to make our lenten journey fruitful. Confirm us in Your service and help us to bear witness to You in the society in which we live by our lives, our fasting and prayer, our gift of self. Listen kindly we pray, to the prayers of St John of God who so avidly followed in the footsteps of our Saviour, Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name, with the Holy Spirit, we pray, one God forever, amen.
