“As we prepare for Lent, we will already be thinking about how we can trim our lives of a few comforts so that we can realign our lives with God who gives us life and sustains us.” Read today’s reflection from the Daily Mass.
BIBLE READINGS: You can find the readings for Ruesday in the sixth week of the year here
Whenever we receive warnings of severe weather coming our way, many people rush to the shops to buy their essentials—which usually includes bread and milk.
Paul Farhi, a staff writer at The Washington Post, shared his own bread-and-milk panic theory in 2005. He suggested that it’s the symbolism of bread and milk that puts them first on our list when disaster loom. He wrote: “Bread is the host, the stuff of life, a palpable object of survival. Milk is a no-brainer, too – it’s the sustenance that a mother provides an infant, a biblical promise (“a land flowing with milk and honey”), a smooth and nutritious foodstuff.”
In the gospel reading, there is a similar concern on the part of the disciples. They are in the boat with Jesus and, with a slight sense of panic, realise they don’t have enough provisions. They’ve only brought one loaf of bread—particularly great oversight considering it hadn’t been long before that Jesus had multiplied the loaves in the deserted place. Thousands of people were fed, and baskets of bread left over. Jesus attempts to turn their attention away from the mundane by giving them a more important thing to think about but still they talk about the lack of bread. In the end, he has to spell it out even more clearly. “Do you still not understand?” he says. Perhaps we can detect a certain frustration in his voice.
We can all so easily miss the point or distract ourselves with unimportant things. We can avoid talking about what’s really important, or not do what needs to be done. We can miss the point of the church and our calling, and pour our efforts into doing things that we don’t really need to do. As we prepare for Lent, we will already be thinking about how we can trim our lives of a few comforts so that we can realign our lives with God who gives us life and sustains us, and who in the Eucharistic feeds us with the Bread of Life
Mass today is at St Mary’s Church at 630pm
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