Gospel: Mt 12:1-8
It happened that, Jesus was walking through the wheat fields on a Sabbath. His disciples were hungry; and they began to pick some heads of wheat, to crush and to eat the grain. When the Pharisees noticed this, they said to Jesus, “Look at your disciples! They are doing what is prohibited on the Sabbath!”
Jesus answered, “Have you not read what David did, when he and his men were hungry? He went into the House of God, and they ate the bread offered to God, though neither he nor his men had the right to eat it, but only the priests. And have you not read in the law, how, on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple desecrate the Sabbath, yet they are not guilty?
I tell you, there is greater than the temple here. If you really knew the meaning of the words: It is mercy I want, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent.
Besides, the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
REFLECTION
A hundred times a day, parents are bombarded by requests from their children. Some of these requests are entirely reasonable, and parents are glad to grant them. Some of these requests are clearly unreasonable, and parents have no problem refusing them. But some of these requests are border-line cases: half-reasonable, half-unreasonable. If their child has been quite naughty of late, they might refuse such requests—which in normal circumstances they would grant. Now, if their child starts crying with heartrending sobs, some parents might relent when their child’s weeping hits a particularly tender chord in their hearts…
In today’s first reading we witness how God first decrees the death of King Hezekiah (a very good king) and how, upon hearing Hezekiah weeping with heart-rending sobs, God relents and grants him another 15 years of life. And he even guarantees his favorable response by a miracle!
We call God “our Father in heaven.” And he is really our Father. So he can change his mind about what he plans to give us, when we fervently ask him to do so. Like any parent, some things we do can hit a tender chord in his heart.
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