Friday of the Twenty-fourth Week in Ordinary Time
1 Cor 15:12-20 + Lk 8:1-3
From our Gospel today, I suggest a thought from the very last line: “who provided for them out of their resources.” This undoubtedly refers to their material resources. However, I suggest we think about another resource place – the human heart. The catechism [#2563] describes the heart as the
“dwelling-place where I am, where I live; …. the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter because as image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.”
Surely the material resources which these women “and many others” provided had their real source in their hearts. They were not just following Jesus and providing for him and his disciples from self-serving motives, even though they certainly wanted some good from their following.
This source, in the heart, has a beautiful reflection in something St. Paul says in today’s first reading: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all.”
If these people provided for Jesus with only earthly expectations in view then they were missing the reason for his coming to earth – to give eternal life!
Reflection by Fr. Xavier Nacke, OSB
Posted in Articles for Lent, Daily Reflections, Lenten Resources