Daily Gospel Reflection – Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
We Just Don’t Get It — Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon
Friends, let us rejoice whenever the grace of God is on display.
The point of the sacraments is so that God’s grace may flood the world, but the Lord can operate outside of our formal structures. He desires these gifts for us, but as the creator of these structures, he is never limited by them.
Daily Gospel Reflection – Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 26, 2021
Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Gospel: Mk 9:38-43, 45, 47-48
At that time, John said to Jesus,
"Teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name,
and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us."
Jesus replied, "Do not prevent him.
There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name
who can at the same time speak ill of me.
For whoever is not against us is for us.
Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink
because you belong to Christ,
amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
"Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,
it would be better for him if a great millstone
were put around his neck
and he were thrown into the sea.
If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.
It is better for you to enter into life maimed
than with two hands to go into Gehenna,
into the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off.
It is better for you to enter into life crippled
than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna.
And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye
than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna,
where 'their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.'"
Source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in our Gospel today Jesus speaks, with incredible bluntness, about cutting off one’s hand and foot and the plucking out of one’s own eye. If these things are a block to your salvation, get rid of them, for it is better to enter life maimed than to enter Gehenna with all of your limbs and members.
The hand is the organ by which we reach out and grasp things. The soul is meant for union with God, but we have instead reached out to creatures, all of our energies grasping at finite things.
The Lord also speaks of the foot. The foot is the organ by which we set ourselves on a definite path. We are meant to walk on the path which is Christ. Do we? Or have we set out down a hundred errant paths, leading to glory, honor, power, or pleasure?
*We are designed to seek after and look for God. Have we spent much of our lives looking in all the wrong places, beguiled by the beauties and enticements of this world? And are we willing to pluck out our eye spiritually, to abandon many of the preoccupations that have given us pleasure?
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