Love not just for ourselves but love that wills the good of and in another. This kind of extraordinary love does not exist simply in one’s own family since a family generally is one unit in itself; but in community. It is only in a community of disciples in our Lord Jesus Christ that such love is nurtured, flourishes and eventually overflows out into the world! For such love is built upon the rock where living waters flow.
See and feel the love for yourselves in today’s First Reading. Hear the affection the apostle of Christ, St Paul has for His beloved community of disciples who lifts him up just as he lifts them up through Christ our Lord. Do you belong to such a loving community? If you do not then why not? Do they not exist where you’re at? Or rather have you kept yourself away from them? If you are in such a community then how welcoming are you of others as a community, when someone in search of one approaches? Does your community proactively reach out to others?
Sweet saviour grant me a disciple’s heart after Your own, let me to tend to my sister or by brother in need swiftly. Just as You make haste to help me in my need. Amen
First reading
Philippians 1:1-11
Greeting and thanksgiving
From Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus, together with their presiding elders and deacons. We wish you the grace and peace of God our Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God whenever I think of you; and every time I pray for all of you, I pray with joy, remembering how you have helped to spread the Good News from the day you first heard it right up to the present. I am quite certain that the One who began this good work in you will see that it is finished when the Day of Christ Jesus comes. It is only natural that I should feel like this towards you all, since you have shared the privileges which have been mine: both my chains and my work defending and establishing the gospel. You have a permanent place in my heart, and God knows how much I miss you all, loving you as Christ Jesus loves you. My prayer is that your love for each other may increase more and more and never stop improving your knowledge and deepening your perception so that you can always recognise what is best. This will help you to become pure and blameless, and prepare you for the Day of Christ, when you will reach the perfect goodness which Jesus Christ produces in us for the glory and praise of God.
Gospel
Luke 14:1-6
‘Is it against the law to cure a man on the sabbath?’
Now on a sabbath day Jesus had gone for a meal to the house of one of the leading Pharisees; and they watched him closely. There in front of him was a man with dropsy, and Jesus addressed the lawyers and Pharisees. ‘Is it against the law’ he asked ‘to cure a man on the sabbath, or not?’ But they remained silent, so he took the man and cured him and sent him away. Then he said to them, ‘Which of you here, if his son falls into a well, or his ox, will not pull him out on a sabbath day without hesitation?’ And to this they could find no answer.
CatholicJules.net 