Daily Gospel Reflection

Who Have You Told?

Our lives change when our habits change. This is an amazing habit. Reflecting each day on the gospel and looking for a way to anchor our day in the Word of God. An amazing habit. Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where we are exploring the genius of Jesus, the genius of the gospel, the genius of Catholicism, and looking for a word, phrase, or idea each day to anchor our lives, our day in the Word of God. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Mark. Jesus has risen from the dead, and we are experiencing these various appearances to different people.

And today we're hearing the telling or a different telling of story we've heard in the past few days from the Gospel of Mark 16; 9-15. Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. He went out and told those whom he had been with as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it. After this, he appeared in another form to two of them as they were walking in the country. And they went back and told the rest, but they did not believe them. Afterward, he appeared to the 11 themselves as they sat at table and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw Him after He had risen. And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation."

What jumps out at you today? Where does the Spirit lead you? Two things jump out at me. First is this hardness of heart, that phrase, hardness of heart. Jesus rebukes them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. It's so easy to harden our hearts. Why do we do it? We do it often to protect ourselves. We get hurt. We don't want to get hurt again. We think by hardening our hearts, it will prevent us from getting hurt again. Someone lies to us or betrays us. We harden our hearts. We think, "Well, I'm never going to trust anybody ever again," is a hardening of the heart, right? And we think that this will protect us. But it doesn't. It won't. We harden our hearts against truth that we don't want to accept. We harden our hearts against truth, that we don't want to live. So in what way have you hardened your heart of light? And maybe our prayer today is to come to Jesus and say, "Soften my heart. Soften my heart toward all people. Not some people, all people.”

The other thing that jumps out at me today is the last word. Go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole of creation. How are you preaching the gospel? How are you sharing the gospel? Many of you are Ambassadors of Dynamic Catholic and you can look at all that we are doing to preach the gospel and you can claim some of that for yourself because we absolutely could not do it without you. I know a lot of you, you'll order six books or a case of books or books for your parishes at Christmas or Easter. That's a way of preaching the gospel to the whole world. And we're grateful that we are partnering together in these things because it's what Jesus told us to do. And we're grateful to be partnering with you to do what Jesus directed us to do. Have an amazing day. Remember, be bold, be Catholic.