11th Sunday in Ordinary Time B June 9, 2024

Father Rick’s Gospel-Reflection for the 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time B
June 9, 2024, Mark 4:26-34
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/060924.cfm

FAITH and HOPE

This last Thursday, I was blessed to see the movie, “Jesus Thirst: The Miracle of the Eucharist.” In this documentary, people who believed in and did not believe in the miracle of the Eucharist were interviewed. The people who did not believe appeared to be wandering, vague, and uncertain.

What a contrast between people who believed in the Real Presence of the Blessed Sacrament. One word describes all of them, and that is the supernatural virtue of FAITH.

If we ask people what the biggest crisis we are experiencing is, we can get various answers: environmental, for sure, as well as economic, and others would say the division politics is causing in our country.

When we remove God from our hearts, families, culture, and country, people will never be happy or satisfied. Many follow the motto, “My away from the highway.” There will never be a “heaven on earth.” Heaven is to be for earth to contain.

I often see people with the supernatural virtue of hope where God is acting in and through their suffering, darkness, and difficulties. Despite their suffering, they smile when they see me, but not me, but truly Jesus in my priesthood and the Blessed Sacrament I carry.

Hope gives us the courage to endure our sufferings and peace to know that our true home is in heaven. PS: It is worth waiting for.
Let me close with a quote from Pope Benedict he gave on November 30, 2007:

“If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man’s ethical formation, in man’s inner growth (cf. Eph 3:16; 2 Cor 4:16), then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and the world… Let us put it very simply: Man needs God, otherwise he remains without hope… There is no doubt, therefore, that a “Kingdom of God” accomplished without God – a kingdom therefore of man alone – inevitably ends up as the “perverse end” of all things… [W]e have seen it, and we see it over and over again” (Pope Benedict XVI, Spe salvi, November 30, 2007, 22-23, emphasis added).

Gospel Challenge:
Embrace the faith in the hope that God pours into your heart every day, especially for any struggles you have experienced or are experiencing. Remember, God is good in us all the time.”

Love Your Neighbor!

Fr. Rick Pilger, IC
pastor