One Minute Reflection – 4 July – “Month of the Precious Blood” – Ezekiel 2: 2-5, Psalms 123: 1-2, 2, 3-4, Second Corinthians 12: 7-10, Mark 6: 1-6
“So he could not perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them …” – Mark 6:5
REFLECTION – “One meaning of “could not” is simply the limits of some human will. Take, for example, the point ,that Christ “could not” fulfill any signs in Nazareth was due to disbelief on their part.
Something essential for healing is required on both sides—faith on the part of the patients, power on that of the healer. So one side without its counterpart “could not,” so to speak, perform them.
As this can be seen in medical care, it can also be seen in moral transformation. Similarly involving the limits of the will are the texts: “The world cannot not hate you” and “How can you speak good, being evil?” The metaphor of “impossibility” here must mean free refusal by the will.
The same idea applies to those passages which say that what is, impossible for humanity is possible for God.
Note also those passages that say that a person “cannot” (in one sense) be born a second time and a needle’s eye “cannot” let a camel through. What would stop these events happening if God willed them directly?
Besides all these, there is, as in the case we are presently considering, a “cannot” in the sense of that which is totally inconceivable.
We cannot conceive that God can be evil or fail to exist.
It is inconceivable that reality cannot exist or two times two is fourteen.
So here, it cannot be the case, that the Son would do anything which the Father would not do!” – St Gregory Nazianzen (330-390) Archbishop of Constantinople, Father and Doctor of the Church – Oration 30 (On the Son),10-11.
PRAYER – Lord our God, make us love You above all things and all our fellow-men, with a love that is worthy of You. May we look to Your Divine Son in total trust, faith, love and imitation. Grant too, that by the prayers of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we too may be granted the grace to follow Your only Son, no matter our sufferings, to one day reach You, in our heavenly home. We make our prayer, through Christ our Lord, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever amen.
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus in satisfaction for my sins and for the wants of holy Church. – Indulgence 100 days, Each time, Pope Pius VII, 22 September 1817.
AnaStpaul 