Like me I am sure you have seen holy men and women who inspire us by their faith and obedience to the Lord our God. They are joyful of heart, gentle and merciful. Then there those who give the appearance of being Holy, they are in the centre of what is going on but on occasion their words and actions are baffling to those who look up to them and some are even scandalized by them. Their very own children may be far from God our Heavenly Father. That being said let us examine our own lives, how are we glorifying the Lord by the way we live our lives?
For we should be living sacraments of the Lord our God leading others to the knowledge, wisdom, love, peace and joy of Him who desires an intimate relationship with all His children. We are and should always be the outward signs of His inward grace in our lives!
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. Ps139:23
Purify and cleanse me from within so that I may love and serve fully in Your love. Amen
First reading
1 Kings 10:1-10 ·
Solomon prays to the Lord in the Temple
The fame of Solomon having reached the queen of Sheba, she came to test him with difficult questions. She brought immense riches to Jerusalem with her, camels laden with spices, great quantities of gold, and precious stones. On coming to Solomon, she opened her mind freely to him; and Solomon had an answer for all her questions, not one of them was too obscure for the king to expound. When the queen of Sheba saw all the wisdom of Solomon, the palace he had built, the food at his table, the accommodation for his officials, the organisation of his staff and the way they were dressed, his cup-bearers, and the holocausts he offered in the Temple of the Lord, it left her breathless, and she said to the king, ‘What I heard in my own country about you and your wisdom was true, then! Until I came and saw it with my own eyes I could not believe what they told me, but clearly they told me less than half: for wisdom and prosperity you surpass the report I heard. How happy your wives are! How happy are these servants of yours who wait on you always and hear your wisdom! Blessed be the Lord your God who has granted you his favour, setting you on the throne of Israel! Because of the Lord’s everlasting love for Israel, he has made you king to deal out law and justice.’ And she presented the king with a hundred and twenty talents of gold and great quantities of spices and precious stones; no such wealth of spices ever came again as those given to King Solomon by the queen of Sheba.
Gospel
Mark 7:14-23
It is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean
Jesus called the people to him and said, ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into a man from outside can make him unclean; it is the things that come out of a man that make him unclean. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this.’
When he had gone back into the house, away from the crowd, his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, ‘Do you not understand either? Can you not see that whatever goes into a man from outside cannot make him unclean, because it does not go into his heart but through his stomach and passes out into the sewer?’ (Thus he pronounced all foods clean.) And he went on, ‘It is what comes out of a man that makes him unclean. For it is from within, from men’s hearts, that evil intentions emerge: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, malice, deceit, indecency, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within and make a man unclean.’
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