Saturday of the Twenty Second Week in Ordinary Time. Year II (St. Teresa of Calcutta).1 Col.4:6-15; Luke 6:1-5
Opposition to the ministry of Jesus was becoming quite open, with one of the primary charges against him being ‘breaking of the Sabbath law’. Today Jesus takes his disciples through a corn field, and they begin plucking and eating ears of corn as they went. This was normal practice, since the law allowed anyone passing through a corn field to pluck corn in so far as they didn’t put a sickle into it (Deut.23:25). However, one was not supposed to reap, thresh, winnow, and prepare food on the Sabbath. By plucking ears of corn, the disciples were guilty of reaping; by rubbing it in their hands, of threshing; by throwing off the husks, of winnowing; and by eating, of preparing food, according to Jewish law. But Jesus reminds the Pharisees that genuine human need must always come before ritual law.
Friends, in St. Teresa of Calcutta, we see one who perfectly understood human need. Having received the vocation of caring for the poor and destitute, she left the convent of the Sisters of Loreto in 1948, and cared for the sick wherever she could find them; lying sick in the street or even dying in dustbins. She gathered following and the new congregation of the Missionaries of Charity was found in the Diocese of Calcutta in 1950. Mother Teresa died on 5 September 1997 and was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 19 October 2003 and canonized by Pope Francis on 4 September 2016.
Like this great woman, who influenced the world, we too are called to genuinely attend to the sick, the aged, the poor and the destitute where ever they can be found.
God bless your weekend!
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