Have you ever made fire from wood or coal? When the fire starts to die, you stir up the wood or coal to keep the flame burning. 

In the same way, we also need stirring up in our lives. Stirred up may mean going through trials or rock-bottom moments. It can be having more worries, pain, doubts, or everything that makes us uncomfortable. 

No one wants to get stirred up. But you know what? These stirred-up moments keep us on our toes and keep us fired up. We move. We find ways. We become better. We grow. 

What areas of your life are being stirred up at the moment? Is it in your relationships? Your health? Your finances? Your faith? God may just be stirring up the fire to keep us burning in all these areas. He wants us to burn brightly not just for ourselves but for others as well. 

If you are being stirred up at the moment, hang in there! Don’t give up. God is preparing something better for you! Mia Bueno (buenos@yahoo.com) 

Reflect:

Think about the past instances that your life was stirred up. How did it change you as a person? 

Father God, we thank You for moments that make us better persons. We pray that we always see Your hand moving through it all. Help us to shine brightly for You. Amen. 

Saint Boniface, bishop and martyr, pray for us.

We are responsible for our continued growth in the Holy Spirit. The Church leaders, bishops, and priests have a particular responsibility to provide teaching and formation, but the individual must partake of what is offered. If nothing is offered, then the laity ought to demand that the Church provides the formation needed. Without formation, our lives will waste away as they are like muscles that fall into atrophy if not used on a regular basis. 

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 has pity on us. (R) 

Gospel | Mark 12:18-27

Jesus had every right to be totally frustrated about being challenged by such hard-hearted people. However, He calmly refuted the question with a very logical counterpunch. We can learn from the attitude of Jesus here. Those of us who have a quick temper need to meditate on the level-headedness of Jesus and seek to grow in this grace. 

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.” 

 Read the Bible in one year! Read JUDITH 1 - 4 today.

One memorable trip I had was in October 2012 at the Beit She’arim National Park in Galilee. It is a necropolis with tombs cut out of rock. Naturally, the most desired burial place for the Jews is the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. However, in 185 A.D., when the Jews were barred from the area, Beit She’arim became an alternative. When we toured the different tombs of the complex, we saw the cult of the dead exercised by the Jews. The utmost care and respect that they put into the inscriptions and burial spaces showed the love and care that they gave to their deceased. It is not just a one-time visit to the necropolis for the family of the dead. They go every year to honor their parent or ancestor. Our professor and guide told us that this is the way the children keep the name of their father alive. More children means more people preserving the memory of the person and, thus, he remains alive. Therefore, woe to those who have no children because no one will keep their memory alive. 

This is the concept of immortality upheld by many of the Jews. It is the one upheld by the Sadducees who posed the ridiculous situation to trap Jesus. This is the same as saying that one becomes immortal by building a house, writing a book, planting a tree, or fathering a child. This is an impersonal immortality. 

This is not the view of Jesus and those who believe in the resurrection. For them, there is personal immortality—that we will continue existing after death, and that the person who had existed on earth will continue to preserve his existence. 

The philosopher Boethius defines immortality as the simultaneously whole and perfect possession of unending life. Our immortality, thus, is not just about the continuous remembrance of our name. It is the life that we will have with God. Fr. Joel Camaya, SDB 

Reflection Questions:

How do you see immortality? Do you work for the life after this earthly existence? 

Lord, raise up our loved ones who have gone ahead of us.

Today, I pray for: ____________________________________