Of all the Ten Commandments, which one do you think people violate the most? “You shall not bear false witness (Do not lie)?” Or, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain?” My guess it’s the third: “Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.”

Keeping the Sabbath means we cease from doing any professional work. No checking of business e-mails, editing of our Monday presentation, or tweaking of the business plan. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a command. Because God knows when we rest in Him, He can work things out for us. When we work, we oftentimes get in His way and delay His magnificent will in heaven to be done for us on earth.

But keeping the Lord’s Day holy only becomes a real blessing when Jesus is Lord of your Sabbath: when you set aside that day not as a ritual but to nurture His relationship with You; when you rest from work to enjoy God more and doing something you really enjoy; when you spend quality time with your family; when you do all these with Him.

Friend, rest in Jesus! Marc V. Lopez (marcvlopez88@gmail.com)

reflect

Do you keep the Lord’s Day holy? If you do ministry work on Sunday, have you set aside another day for rest?

Jesus, You are the Lord of my Sabbath. How do You want us to spend it?

St. Gregory the Great, pope and Doctor of the Church, pray for us.

We will experience hardships in the service of the Gospel. Jesus and the saints suffered. Should we expect anything different? Some will suffer more than others. We do not know why God allows this to happen. What’s important is we embrace His will for us and remain faithful to Him until the end.

⁶ Brothers and sisters: Learn from myself and Apollos not to go beyond what is written, so that none of you will be inflated with pride in favor of one person over another. ⁷ Who confers distinction upon you? What do you possess that you have not received? But if you have received it, why are you boasting as if you did not receive it? ⁸ You are already satisfied; you have already grown rich; you have become kings without us! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we also might become kings with you. ⁹ For as I see it, God has exhibited us Apostles as the last of all, like people sentenced to death, since we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and men alike. ¹⁰ We are fools on Christ’s account, but you are wise in Christ; we are weak, but you are strong; you are held in honor, but we in disrepute. ¹¹ To this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clad and roughly treated, we wander about homeless ¹² and we toil, working with our own hands. When ridiculed, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; ¹³ when slandered, we respond gently. We have become like the world’s rubbish, the scum of all, to this very moment. ¹⁴ I am writing you this not to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. ¹⁵ Even if you should have countless guides to Christ, yet you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the Gospel.

Responsorial Psalm | Psalm 145:17-18, 19-20, 21

R: The Lord is near to all who call upon him.

¹⁷ The Lord is just in all his ways and holy in all his works. ¹⁸ The Lord is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth. (R) ¹⁹ He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them. ²⁰ The Lord keeps all who love him, but all the wicked he will destroy. (R) ²¹ May my mouth speak the praise of the Lord, and may all flesh bless his holy name forever and ever. (R)

Gospel | Luke 6:1-5

What is wrong with picking and eating corn on the Sabbath? The law against work on the Sabbath is supposed to protect people from having to do full-scale and time-consuming work on the day that is dedicated to honoring God. Eating an ear of corn may be against the letter of law but only to the extent of already harvesting the crops.

Gospel Acclamation

I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father except through me.

¹ While Jesus was going through a field of grain on a sabbath, his disciples were picking the heads of grain, rubbing them in their hands, and eating them. ² Some Pharisees said, “Why are you doing what is unlawful on the sabbath?” ³ Jesus said to them in reply, “Have you not read what David did when he and those who were with him were hungry? ⁴ How he went into the house of God, took the bread of offering, which only the priests could lawfully eat, ate of it, and shared it with his companions.” ⁵ Then he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

Read the Bible in one year! Read ISAIAH 53 - 56 today.

Several years ago, I presided at the wedding of a good friend of mine. During the reception, my friend delivered her thanksgiving speech and addressed her father with these words: “Dad, the thing that I will miss most after this day is no longer hearing your surname after my name . . .” That, for me, was the ultimate tribute a father can hear from her daughter. What made it more special was that the man was not even her real father. Her biological father abandoned the family when she five years old and had not been heard of since.

In the First Reading, Saint Paul calls the Corinthians his children and himself as their father. “It was I who begot you in Christ Jesus through my preaching of the Gospel.” Saint Paul did not sire children in Corinth; he begot children in Corinth. Modern translations do not anymore use the word beget. In its place, they use the phrase “I became your father.”

To sire a child is different from begetting a child. To sire a child is simply to have a child in the biological or physical sense. To beget a child is to foster a spiritual child, whether that child is your biological child or not. To beget a child is to dedicate one’s life in rearing that child into integrity and Christian maturity. Siring children is easy, and not to mention pleasurable. Begetting children is altogether different. It demands sacrifice, responsibility, and self-donation.

Fatherhood is not merely biological. Neither is it just providing financially. In my years in the ministry, I have spoken to countless young people who I realized are so poor because the only thing they have is money. Fatherhood (and motherhood, for that matter) in its essence is bringing out the man in every child. That requires presence, modeling, and sacrifice. That is precisely what Saint Paul did in begetting his community to maturity in Christ.

Times are hard indeed. Money is not easy to come by. Though well-intentioned, it is easy to fall into the temptation that the provision we give our children determines the quality of our fatherhood or motherhood to them. In truth, the values we give our children are far more important than the valuables we give them. Fr. Joel O. Jason

reflection questions

What is your relationship with your children? Is it one of siring or begetting?

God, our Father, draw and mold all fathers and mothers according to Your heart. Amen.

Today, I pray for: ____________________________________________