Today's Gospel

Diagnose Your Spiritual Illness

Hi, I'm Matthew Kelly and welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we explore the genius of the gospels, the genius of Jesus, the genius of Catholicism, and look for ways to anchor our lives in the gospel, live it out more fully each day. Today's reading comes from the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, verses 53 through 56. And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Gannesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, immediately, the people recognized him and ran about the whole neighborhood and began to bring sick people on their pallets and stretchers to any place where they heard he was.

And wherever he came in villages, cities, or country, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made well. Remember, each day we're looking for a word or a phrase or an idea that jumps out at you. The thing that jumps out at me today is that these people, they had this faith. It wasn't a time of mass communications, but they'd heard about Jesus, and they'd heard about the works he had done, and they'd heard about his ability to heal people.

And they had this great faith, and they brought their friends and their families, and everyone who was sick, and they laid them in front of Jesus, and they begged Jesus to heal them. And the question I ask myself as I hear these readings about healings, about sickness, blindness, deafness, is like, what is the deafness in me that needs to be healed today? What is the blindness in me that needs to be healed today? What is the sickness in me that needs to be healed today, and am I even aware of it? If you're really sick, you're aware you're really sick, physically. If you're blind, you're obviously aware you're blind, physically.

If you're deaf, obviously aware that you're deaf physically. But we can have massive spiritual ailments and pretend they don't exist, or be oblivious to them, or unconscious of them, or whatever it is. And so Jesus in the gospel is constantly inviting us to say, "Okay, what's your deafness? What's your blindness? What's your sickness?" And right along top of that, he's coming along to say, "Because I am here to heal the sick. I'm here to help the blind see. I'm here to help the deaf hear." And so as we go through our day-to-day, let's think, what are our limitations? What are our spiritual illnesses? And let's ask God to heal us. Beg God.

I mean, they begged him. Let's beg God to heal us of our spiritual ailments. God bless you. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic. [music]

I hope you're enjoying the Daily Gospel Reflections. So one of the things I love doing, spending this time with you each day. Recently, I released a book called 33 Days to Divine Mercy. If you haven't had a chance to check that out yet, I encourage you to do that today.