Woe to you Bethsaida - Reflection on Mass Readings -

 

 

 

 Tuesday of the Fifteenth week in Ordinary Time 16 July 2013

 

 Our Lady of Mount Carmel

 

 

Exodus 2:1-15

A certain man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, who conceived and bore a son. Seeing that he was a goodly child, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took a papyrus basket, daubed it with bitumen and pitch, and putting the child in it, placed it among the reeds on the river bank.

His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him. Pharaoh's daughter came down to the river to bathe, while her maids walked along the river bank. Noticing the basket among the reeds, she sent her handmaid to fetch it.

On opening it, she looked, and lo, there was a baby boy, crying! She was moved with pity for him and said, "It is one of the Hebrews' children."

Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?"

"Yes, do so," she answered. So the maiden went and called the child's own mother.

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will repay you." The woman therefore took the child and nursed it.

When the child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him as her son and called him Moses; for she said, "I drew him out of the water."

On one occasion, after Moses had grown up, when he visited his kinsmen and witnessed their forced labour, he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own kinsmen.

Looking about and seeing no one, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

The next day he went out again, and now two Hebrews were fighting! So he asked the culprit, "Why are you striking your fellow Hebrew?"

But he replied, "Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses became afraid and thought, "The affair must certainly be known."

Pharaoh, too, heard of the affair and sought to put him to death. But Moses fled from him and stayed in the land of Midian. 

 

 

Ps 69(68):3.14.30-31.33-34. 

I am sunk in the abysmal swamp

where there is no foothold;

I have reached the watery depths;

the flood overwhelms me.

 

But I pray to you, O LORD,

for the time of your favour, O God!

In your great kindness answer me

with your constant help.

 

I am afflicted and in pain;

let your saving help, O God, protect me.

I will praise the name of God in song,

and I will glorify him with thanksgiving.

 

“See, you lowly ones, and be glad;

you who seek God, may your hearts revive!

For the LORD hears the poor,

and his own who are in bonds he spurns not.”

 

 

 

 

Mt 11:20-24. 

Jesus began to reproach the towns where most of his mighty deeds had been done, since they had not repented. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes.

But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum: 'Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.' For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day.

But I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom on the day of judgment than for you."

 

 

 Commentary of the day :

 

Have you ever experienced a miracle? If you had, you could never deny the existence of God or forgot what He has done for you even if life turns out bad for you or God seems sometimes distant. That memory of an inexplicable event that evidenced God for you will always sustain you. That's why Jesus could criticise the places where He had performed His miracles because they had turned away again from Him.

Remind yourself today of all the blessings you have received from God that you have failed to give thanks or acknowledgement for. 

 

 Blessed Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), founder of the Missionary Sisters of Charity

 A Simple Path, p. 51

 

 

Called to choose to love and to be loved

 

We are all capable of good and evil. We are not born bad: everybody has something good inside. Some hide it, some neglect it, but it is there. God created us to love and to be loved, so it is our test from God to choose one path or the other. Any negligence in loving can lead someone to say “Yes” to evil, and when that happens we have no idea how far it can spread... We gain the strength to overcome this from prayer, because if we are close to God we spread joy and love to everybody around us. If evil takes possession of someone, that person, in turn, may spread evil to everybody around him. If we are in contact with such people we must try and help them and show them that God cares for them. Pray hard to help bring prayer back to them so that they may once more see God in themselves and then see Him in others... We have all been created by the same loving hand. Christ's love is always stronger than the evil in the world, so we need to love and to be loved: it's as simple as that. This shouldn't be such a struggle to achieve.