Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the Day
RB: Ch 11 Vigils or Night Office on Sunday
Mass: Gn 2:4b-9, 15-17; Resp Ps 104; Mk 7:14-23

A stream was welling up out of the earth and was watering all the surface of the earth.

'The grass is not always greener,' goes the saying when we think that if we didn't live in this or that place, with these or those people who act in this or that way, under such stressful conditions with so many temptations, etc. It is true that sometimes we have to move on, yet what Jesus says today is telling: Nothing that enters from outside can defile. Wherever we find ourselves the same temptations and reasons for blaming our actions on others and on our present situation will crop up. As said on numerous occasions, there is one person who always goes where I go; namely, me. We ask Our Lord to cleanse our hearts and minds, to fill us with His grace so that what comes out of us in our words and deeds be filled with love, mercy, and compassion. 'Bloom where you are planted.'

What matters, says Jesus, is no longer the Law but righteousness, a word by which He means inner holiness.

(André Louf)

O God, you have willed that we be partakers 

in the one Bread and the one Chalice, 

grant us,we pray, so to live 

that, made one in Christ, 

we may joyfully bear fruit 

for the salvation of the world.

Through Christ our Lord.

(Prayer after Communion, Mass)

To look at God and to let oneself be looked at by God is to pray.

(Pope Francis, General Audience, February 13, 2019)