Daily Gospel Reflection – Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbott
January 17, 2023
Memorial of Saint Anthony, Abbott
Gospel: Mk 2:23-28
As Jesus was passing through a field of grain on the sabbath,
his disciples began to make a path while picking the heads of grain.
At this the Pharisees said to him,
"Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?"
He said to them,
"Have you never read what David did
when he was in need and he and his companions were hungry?
How he went into the house of God when Abiathar was high priest
and ate the bread of offering that only the priests could lawfully eat,
and shared it with his companions?"
Then he said to them,
"The sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath.
That is why the Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath."
*United States Conference of Catholic
Bishop Robert Barron
Friends, in today’s Gospel, Jesus acknowledges that he is “lord even of the sabbath.”
And the claim of the first Christians was Iesous Kyrios—Jesus is Lord. This was bound to annoy both Jews and Gentiles. The Jews would be massively put off by the use of the term Kyrios in describing an ordinary human being. Moreover, the implication that this man was the Messiah of Israel—when he had died at the hands of Israel’s enemies—was simply blasphemous.
And for the Greeks, this claim was subversive, for a watchword of the time was Kaiser Kyrios—the Emperor is Lord. A new system of allegiance was being proposed, a new type of ordering and lordship—and this was indeed a threat to the regnant system.
Christians should enter the public arena boldly and confidently, for we are not announcing a private or personal spirituality but rather declaring a new King under whose lordship everything must fall. If Jesus is truly Lord, then government, business, family life, the arts, sexuality, and entertainment all come properly under his headship.
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