“While I have breath, while I have life, I will be for You, My King,” we sang with cracking voices in a video call. There was no dry eye in the room as we, retreat attendants, worshiped with Bro. Bimbo Leonardo, a preacher from The Feast Timog. He wanted to attend the leaders retreat but he was very sick with cancer. And here I was dragging my feet to come.

I was burnt out. The fire that once consumed me was nearly extinguished. “I’m tired of showing up for people who don’t show up,” I shared with my groupmates. “I’d step in every time someone dropped the ball.” Slowly, that exhausted me. I felt so alone. But as we sang in chorus in that video call, I remembered I was part of a bigger family. Some servants may not show up, but there are leaders who toil with me week in, week out. I was not alone after all.

If you’re losing the flame you once had, fan the flame by being part of a family. A single coal removed from the fire will easily flicker out. But together, our fire burns stronger. 

Veia Lim Viñas (@veialimvinas) 

reflect

Who can you run to to help you fan your flame?

Lord, remind me I am never alone. There are people who are with me. But most of all, You never leave me.  

St. Charles Lwanga and companions, martyrs, pray for us.

The fundamental truth of our salvation lies in these words: “Not because we have done anything by ourselves.” Jesus saved us through His cross and resurrection, in obedience to the Father’s will. May this truth help us realize that we are truly dependent on God’s mercy. We are incapable of saving ourselves. 

¹ Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God for the promise of life in Christ Jesus, ² to Timothy, my dear child: grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. ³ I am grateful to God, whom I worship with a clear conscience as my ancestors did, as I remember you constantly in my prayers, night and day. ⁶ For this reason, I remind you to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands. ⁷ For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. ⁸ So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. ⁹ He saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our works but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, ¹⁰ but now made manifest through the appearance of our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, ¹¹ for which I was appointed preacher and Apostle and teacher. ¹² On this account I am suffering these things; but I am not ashamed, for I know him in whom I have believed and am confident that he is able to guard what has been entrusted to me until that day.

Responsorial Psalm | Psalm 123:1-2, 2

R: To you, O Lord, I lift up my eyes.

¹ To you I lift up my eyes who are enthroned in heaven. ² Behold, as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters. (R) As the eyes of a maid are on the hands of her mistress, so are our eyes on the Lord, our God, till he have pity on us. (R)

Gospel | Mark 12:18-27

The Scriptures present us with the truths we need for our salvation. This is what we should take from them, rather than outsmarting one another with clever scriptural arguments or positions. We waste an enormous amount of time and energy when we lose our focus.

Gospel Acclamation

I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord; whoever believes in me will never die.

¹⁸ Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus and put this question to him, ¹⁹ saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us, ‘If someone’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ 20 Now, there were seven brothers. The first married a woman and died, leaving no descendants. ²¹ So, the second brother married her and died, leaving no descendants, and the third likewise. ²² And the seven left no descendants. Last of all, the woman also died. ²³ At the resurrection when they arise, whose wife will she be? For all seven had been married to her.” ²⁴ Jesus said to them, “Are you not misled because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? ²⁵ When they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. ²⁶ As for the dead being raised, have you not read in the Book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God told him, I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? ²⁷ He is not God of the dead but of the living. You are greatly misled.”

Reflect

What truths have you discovered in your daily reading of the Bible? 

What is the most important one for you?

Read the Bible in one year! Read  2 SAMUEL 21 - 24 today.

In today’s Gospel passage, the Sadducees pose to Jesus an imaginary but close to an improbable situation of a woman who married seven brothers, each of whom left her childless. The question was ridiculous: “At the resurrection, whose 

wife will she be?”

The end goal of the self-appointed prosecutors was to reduce the argument in favor of the resurrection to absurdity. It was another well-crafted trap designed to put Jesus in a tough spot, and potentially lend credence to their disbelief about the resurrection.

John Shea reminds us of how a Russian cosmonaut, after soaring into space for the first time, announced that he had been to the home of God—but no one was home. John’s grandfather wanted a piece of the boy’s mind about the proud announcement of the cosmonaut. John mumbled an evasive reply, to which his grandfather retorted: “He didn’t fly high enough.”

I would like to think that faith, simply put, is believing in God who is in heaven. Love is relating to God both on earth and in heaven—and to others as well. And hope is the capacity and enduring desire to soar high and go on relating to Him despite the pain, disappointment, illness, fear, confusion, anxiety toward an uncertain future, etc.—and still hold on to the promise of a new life, a glorified existence, after we pass from this mortal life.

Sadducean prosecutors and deniers abound everywhere. Fewer and fewer younger people go regularly to Mass on Sundays, and probably even fewer relate to God in a meaningful and personal way through prayer on a daily basis.

I would like to invite you, dear readers and fellow believers, to be the sparks of hope that you all want to see. I see such sparks every time I go for sick visitations and celebrate the Holy Mass. 

Believe. Love. Hope. For life! 

Fr. Chito Dimaranan, SDB 

reflection question

How can you be the spark of hope that you want to see in the world? 

May I continue to believe, to hope, and to love—despite the chaos in the world that we have now. Amen.

Today, I pray for __________________________________________