Prayer Prompt before reading MK 3:7-12: Come, Holy Spirit, teach me how to pray well, interpret the Scriptures for me so that I may know the Truth about who God the Father is and who God the Son is so that I may know who I am.
“HE TOLD HIS DISCIPLES TO HAVE A BOAT READY FOR HIM BECAUSE OF THE CROWD, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT CRUSH HIM.” MK 3:7-12
Humbly submit your will to God (Thy Will be done) and consecrate yourself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus through Mary and Joseph.
Why do people desire Jesus? On the surface, because he heals them. Spiritually, he has mercy on them as a sinner and frees them from sin. More deeply though, He has what we want, POWER! Lucifer, the fallen angel, the most powerful angel wanted that power more than anything and could not have it.
Today, Lucifer continues to seek and destroy love wherever he can, especially marriage and the family is under attack. We want to control everything in our lives and we are so upset when our plans don’t work out. We are upset when we can’t control people in our relationships and make them do what we want. Power when used incorrectly is about popularity or status, wealth, strength, high positions, awards, and achievement.
It is not bad to achieve when we use the gifts God has blessed us with to the best of our ability to share with others. St. Teresa of Calcutta said, “It does not matter how much we accomplish, but how much we love.” The problem is when we obsess over it, work too many hours and leave our families behind, miss Mass for weekend sports tournaments, and have to go into extreme debt to keep up a fake life of wealth to keep up our status. Mother Teresa said, “In the end, it is always between you and God.”
Jesus has done an amazing job of revealing Himself to us in the last 3 weeks. He comes to us as a baby, completely innocent and poor. He is revealed at the Epiphany and worshiped by earthly kings recognizing Him as the one who has all of the POWER and is the one True King. God, with this power, does not hold it over our heads and use it against us, He gave it to us and gave Himself to us, so we may share in this power which is LOVE.
He is adored by the shepherds who were told by angels that God is on earth to bring peace to His people. Zechariah and Anna reveal at the Presentation in the temple, “This child will be responsible for the rise and fall of many in Israel”. Mary’s heart is pierced which begins a sorrowful and suffering heart that recognizes the most POWERFUL will have to suffer and die to REDEEM all sinners.
Then, John the Baptist speaks prophetic words, “Behold, the Lamb of God”. God speaks from the heavens and says, “This is my beloved Son of whom I am well pleased”. Now, we enter into Jesus’s healing ministry in the Gospel of Mark. This is to fulfill prophecies from the Old Testament about a Messiah who will come to save His people.
It is to draw people to Him. But, most importantly it is to teach us how to use POWER correctly, by SERVING and HUMILITY. Jesus uses the greatest power to serve. He uses it to love. He uses it to have compassion on others.
Most importantly, we struggle with POWER every day of our lives. If we truly desire God in our hearts, we must let go of all of our power and submit to the ONE POWER that can make us the most joyful in this life and the next. Our identity is in the GREATEST POWER through His death and resurrection, we are made in His image and likeness, we are baptized into His family and become His child, through the blood of Christ we become His brother or sister, the GREATEST POWER lives in us in the Holy Spirit and is given to us in the SACRAMENTS.
God’s grace is His life in us. This is why the saints went to Mass daily sometimes more and to confession sometimes daily or weekly. They recognized how POWERLESS they were and how much POWER God had to help them be holy and fight Satan. God desires nothing more than to give you His love and grace. Our greatest POWER is living to be the person God made us to be and sharing that with others.
God’s love is the most POWERFUL thing in the world. It conquered sin and death. It overcomes evil and darkness in our world. It forgives and is for giving. It heals. It changes lives and creates lives. Most importantly, God’s POWER is LOVE. There is no greater POWER than God’s LOVE in all the world.
NOTHING has ever beat God’s LOVE!!! Our POWER is pale in comparison to God’s POWER. We will be held accountable by this POWER on judgment day. At some point we are going to have to submit to the POWER that created us, it would be smart not to let that be our death bed.
It would also be wise to humbly submit to Him, give Him everything, visit Him daily in prayer, invite Him into our daily activities and especially our temptations, visit His mother daily and ask for her help since He told us to from the Cross, receive Him at Mass, and share Him with others by modeling Him in our lives being who we were created to be.
Why do people desire Jesus and want to get so close to Him and crush Him? Holiness is attractive. He is the Way to our heavenly home, our hearts greatest desire. He gives us the POWER to get there and the joy is overwhelming.
Today’s challenge: Make a habit of getting up early in the morning to spend time with Jesus to make Him the center of your life, not just a part of your life. Give up yourself totally and completely to Him through Mary and everything you own. Allow Him to have power over you, so that you have power over the Devil and your desires.
Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children, Jan. 22nd
Please pray for all pre-born babies, their parents, and for those who have had an abortion. Please pray for doctors and nurses and all who work at abortion facilities. Please pray for all lawmakers to make laws to protect life and over turn laws that don’t.
Be a servant, become a saint!
#Christian YODO (You Only Die Once; we will live again!)
This is telling me that all that we need to succeed is Jesus and faith. If we do not have both of these, then there is no way we will be able to make it into heaven.
What stood out to me was: St. Teresa of Calcutta said, “It does not matter how much we accomplish, but how much we love.” This stood out to me because I really highlights the fact that some people think that the only thing that matters are how much money you make, how successful you are etc., but the only thing that matters remotely is how much you can Love.
“He had cured many and, as a result, those who had diseases
were pressing upon him to touch him.
And whenever unclean spirits saw him they would fall down before him
and shout, “You are the Son of God.”
He warned them sternly not to make him known.”
This stuck out to me due to it saying that even the unclean spirits knew that Jesus is the Son Of God, but yet some people in this world dont believe despite everything he has done for us. Despite the fact he cured thousands, despite all the miracles. I believe that people should strive to spread the word of God, try to go to mass, at least make an effort. Make an effort to learn about God, make an effort to go to mass, just try.
I love today’s Gospel because it says people from many countries went to Jesus and they were all asking for healing. I am very inspired by all of their faith because if you think about it: if you heard there was some dude all the way in like, Mongolia or something, healing people left and right, would you take a risk and make the trip to with a loved one to have them healed? These people truly believed that Jesus could heal, so they went and their incredible faith paid off because Jesus is never not worth it.
In today’s gospel Jesus is out and about preaching and healing but the problem is He is about to be crushed by the crowd. He then gets into a boat and preaches and heals from there.
“HE TOLD HIS DISCIPLES TO HAVE A BOAT READY FOR HIM BECAUSE OF THE CROWD, SO THAT THEY WOULD NOT CRUSH HIM.” MK 3:7-12. This stood out to me because Jesus is saying that he needs a boat because of the crowd that came to him for help. Another reason why this stood out to me is because there were lots of people in the crowd Jesus could have gotten stressed from the amount of people that needed to be healed.
Jesus didn’t want everyone to know that He is healing because then some people who are mean would use Him just to get healed. If we use God then He won’t want to help us sometimes. We can’t use God to get what we want, it just doesn’t work that way. We have to always be believing in God and never give up on Him!
what i think this means is that Jesus doesn’t crave fame he doesn’t want to be liked because of the miracles he wants to be loved through prayer and not just because he can do all these great things like a celebrity he wants to be loved like God and not like a celebrity because their is a huge difference. The people desire him because he is our God and he heals them through prayer
What I got from that is ¨ In the end, it is always between you and God.¨ and to use the power I was given correctly.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus healed and cleansed people from all over. We are the people being healed and cleansed over and over, we allow sin to get to us. We go back to Him every time, because we can’t help ourselves but Jesus can.
I really like the qoute ¨In the end, it is always between you and God.¨ By Mother Teresa because it tells us that no matter what we do. Everything will lead back too God. And this is what the scripure tells us, about how no matter how much wealth we have or how popular we are. None of that will pay out in the end when we come face to face with God.
Even the demons believe in God. They know that God is real. Believing in God is much different from following him. We are called to be disciples of him not believers.
In the Gospel today, all of these sick and unclean people came before Jesus, asking to be cured. Jesus didn’t want all of the praise just for His miracles. He wants the praise through true and loving actions that resemble Jesus. He wants us to realize the true reason why He came to save us. We need to be open to God’s teaching. We need to be humble, like Jesus was when everyone was praising Him. We need to include everyone, just like Jesus did. We need to love our enemies, just like Jesus did. We need to do all things for God, just like Jesus did.
In today’s Scripture it is talking about how we desire Jesus, but that does not mean we should take advantage of him. God is love and he has empowered us in the Holy Spirit. It stuck out to me that we should always find a time where we can meditate, pray, or just sit in silence and thank God for all that he has done and given us. God is the most powerful person on this earth and there is nothing greater than God’s love. Jesus is enough for us and we should thank him because if he never died, we would be sinners and we would not be saved by the mighty power of God. God has given us so much that sometimes we are ungrateful and don’t realize how much we are loved by the Father. Even if you are so caught up in your life and you are so busy, we should always find a time in peace and quiet to thank us for waking up another day. Some don’t wake up to see another day that is why we should thank God for giving us another day of life. We should never go to sleep angry at someone because that is not what Jesus would do. Have a good rest of your day! God Bless You!!! God loves you so much with his whole heart!!!
“God’s love is the most POWERFUL thing in the world”. If we truly desire God, we should let go of all of our power and give it to the one power. He is the only one who can make us most joyful in this life and the next.
“He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so that they would not crush him.”
In the Gospel today there are tons of people! Jesus literally asks his disciples to prepare a boat so the people would not crush him. That’s faith and that’s what we need to see everywhere and that’s what our faith needs to be. They believed in Jesus and so they followed him. We need to follow Jesus. There should be so many people that it should almost crush him, but there isn’t and that needs to change.