February 06, 2016
Saturday, 4th Week in
Ordinary Time 1st
Reading: 1 Kgs 3: 4-13 Gospel:Mk6:30–34
The Apostles returned and reported to Jesus all they had done and taught. Then he said to them, “Go off by yourselves to a remote place and have some rest.” For there were so many people coming and going that the apostles had no time even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a secluded area by themselves. But people saw them leaving and many could guess where they were going. So, from all the towns they hurried there on foot, arriving ahead of them.As Jesus went ashore he saw a large crowd, and he had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began a long teaching session with them.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the
Assimilated Life
Experience)
When we are jobless, we hunt for work. But when we finally have one, we drag our feet to the workplace like every day is a blue Monday. There is more to work than salary. “Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice and need.” (Voltaire, Candide). Work is even a matter of justice. St. Paul wrote: “If a man does not choose to work, neither shall he eat” (2 Thes. 3:10). Work used to be a curse we inherited from Adam and Eve. But Christ changed this when he came as son of a carpenter. He sanctified work to become for us not just a means to ward off boredom and set ourselves free from vices, but as source of salvation.
But for work to be source of sanctification, we must offer it to the Lord. If we don’t, we end up like sacrificial lambs slaughtered at the altar of toil as we live to work instead of working to live. “Men, for the sake of getting a living, forget to live” (Margaret Fuller, Summer on the Lakes). Life is supposed to be larger than our jobs, yet we create mammoth jobs that become the lions that devour our entire life.
The only way to tame one such lion is to offer our working hours to the Lord. Only then will work become not just liberating but spiritually uplifting. If coupled with the willingness to do it God’s way, work becomes the wellspring of our salvation.
When work is overwhelming and time is scarce, the first to go is prayer. This is reducing prayer to work of the lowest kind. When we give up prayer because we are busy we are really saying that prayer is an insignificant kind of work that must give way to greater priorities. Treating prayer this way is booting God out, saying we can do it without him. Once God is out, the whole load falls directly upon us. Work consumes us until we can work no more. By this time, St. Paul need not protest if we eat. We’d be dead by then.—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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