Daily Gospel Reflection

Let Prayer Be Your Guide

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where we are exploring the genius of Jesus in the Gospels and looking for a word or a phrase, or an idea each day so we can anchor our day to the gospel and try to live out the gospel in more ways and in deeper ways each day of our lives. Today's reading is from the Gospel of Luke 4:38-44. We're making our way through Luke now. And so sometimes it is helpful to pick up your Bible and get a sense of, "Okay, where is this in the context of things?" And Jesus arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon's house. Now Simon's mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they besought him. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever. And it left her. And immediately she rose and served them. Now, when the sun was setting, all those who had any that were sick with various diseases brought them to him. And he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out crying, "You are the Son of God", and He rebuked them and would not allow them to speak because they knew He was the Christ. And then when it was day, He departed and went into a lonely place. And the people sought him and came to Him and would have kept Him from leaving them. But He said to them, "I must preach the good news of the Kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose." And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.

What jumps out at you today? And we see these two very different phases of the reading. The first phase is obviously Jesus healing, first Simon's mother-in-law, and then all the people brought to him at sunset in the evening. And then he goes away to a lonely place to have some time to reflect. And the people come to him there in the morning. And they want to keep him. They want to hold him for themselves. But he has to pull himself away from them and say, "I have to move on." So we see here a beautiful combination of activity and prayer. We see here a beautiful relationship between activity and prayer. When our prayer becomes separated from activity, from action, from faith in action, it begins to lose something. And when our action is the fruit of prayer, it has a strength, it has a power that is undeniable. We feel it physically even. And so today, let's think about, is our action the fruit of our prayer, or are we just off doing our own thing. Is our action flowing from our prayer? Is our action being guided by our prayer? Is our action being strengthened by our prayer? Or is our action just driven by the ego and just stuff we want to do? Because when our actions, the fruit of our prayer takes on the power of God. Have a great day and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.