GOSPEL

“Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”

From the Gospel according to Mark 8:14-21

The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, “Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, “Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?” They answered him, “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?” They answered him, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

The Gospel of the Lord,

Stubbornness of heart.

The heart resembles a slippery fish that you attempt to grasp but keeps slipping through your fingers repeatedly. You try to tie it to the Lord, but as soon as you let your guard down, it has already wandered off and is restless with so many things. Subsequently,  it come the worries, the anxieties, the complaints, the judgments among us. You stand before the Blessed Sacrament and shout to your heart: “You are with the Lord!” But when you go out, you realize it has slipped away from God’s hands again, and the works of the flesh return in marriage.

We implore the Lord to remove this stubbornness from our hearts and give us a spousal heart that beats in Him at His rhythm, at the rhythm of the Trinitarian God. With this aspiration, we enter Lent tomorrow.

Applied to Married Life:

Henry: You know when you attempt to lay a towel on the sandy beach, and the moment you turn away, it’s already covered in sand? That´s the same as my self-love. Like the sand, it always ends up on top. And when there’s a bit of wind, don’t even get me started.

Eleanor: I don’t even want to tell you… And of course, when we’re not in the Heart of Christ, everything gets disorganized, and disordered passions shoot up and wreak havoc between us. In the end, it all boils down to that – are you in Him or not?

Henry: Exactly. That’s it! Being in Him. That’s the key. Because being in Him, the soul rests. It was created for that.

Eleanor: To rest in Him.

Mother,

Take away this stubbornness from our hearts so that,  we are always in the Lord, at all times. Praise be to Him, glory be to Him forever.