Daily Gospel Reflection
Join the Notre Dame family of faith. Receive God’s Word and a unique reflection in your inbox each day.
July 16, 2021
Jesus was going through a field of grain on the sabbath.
His disciples were hungry
and began to pick the heads of grain and eat them.
When the Pharisees saw this, they said to him,
“See, your disciples are doing what is unlawful to do on the sabbath.”
He said to the them, “Have you not read what David did
when he and his companions were hungry,
how he went into the house of God and ate the bread of offering,
which neither he nor his companions
but only the priests could lawfully eat?
Or have you not read in the law that on the sabbath
the priests serving in the temple violate the sabbath
and are innocent?
I say to you, something greater than the temple is here.
If you knew what this meant, I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
you would not have condemned these innocent men.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the sabbath.”
His disciples were hungry. The gospel starts with a feeling that is familiar to all of us. Against the objection of others, Jesus sees the plight of his disciples, his students, and he makes sure their hunger is satisfied. How can we help others satisfy their hunger, even at the objections of others? Today’s gospel had me reflecting on the past year.
As a professor, my teaching philosophy is centered around the words of Blessed Basil Moreau: “We shall always place education side by side with instruction; the mind will not be cultivated at the expense of the heart.” Last summer, as universities across the country started announcing completely remote fall semesters, I worried. I worried about how I would build relationships with my students. I wanted to walk with them on a journey of intellectual discovery. I wanted to see them grow throughout the year. I did not want them to go hungry, starved in a digital void with no holistic connections with their classmates and instructors.
When Notre Dame announced that they were going to deviate from the pressure to shutter campus and instead bring students back, I breathed a sigh of relief. I prepared for the fall semester and its unique challenges, excited to be able to work with our students. I’m so thankful for the University deciding to bring our students back to campus where their minds, bodies, and spirits could be fed. I was approached throughout the year by students who said time and time again that they were so glad Notre Dame was in-person. You could tell that the previous spring and summer had isolated many students, and they were just longing to be in community again. Returning to campus helped students become whole again.
Ultimately, why did we decide to return to in-person instruction when the world seemed to be suggesting something different? Despite the challenges, we knew that there was something greater here than what online instruction could provide, and our students needed to be fed.
Prayer
My God, Our Father, may your grace always remind us that we must learn to see our lives as invitations to show mercy and to give our love. Whatever we are obliged to do or expected to do matters less than what we are given to do by your inspiration over and beyond the minimum of the “letter of the law.” We pray with the Church through Christ our Lord.
Saint of the Day
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel is a title given to Mary as patron of the Carmelite religious community of contemplative monks, nuns, and priests.
The original Carmelites were hermits living on Mt. Carmel in the Holy Land in the late 12th century. They chose Mt. Carmel because it is the place where the Old Testament prophet Elijah defended the purity of Israel’s faith. The monks built a chapel on the mount and dedicated it to “our lady of the place.”
The Carmelites celebrated a special feast on July 16 to mark the day that Mary appeared to St. Simon Stock and gave him the scapular. By the 1700s, this July 16 feast was being celebrated everywhere in the Church.
St. Simon Stock was an early Carmelite who received a vision of Mary on this date in 1251 in which she gave him the brown scapular. The scapular comes from a two-sided apron that monks wear while they work—a skinny poncho of sorts. In the vision, Mary handed Simon a scapular and told him that she would protect whoever wore it. The garment became part of the Carmelite habit, and appears in many other religious habits as well.
Many people wear a small version of the scapular under their shirts, which looks like two brown, square pieces of cloth that hang on the breast and back, connected by strings around one’s neck. It is worn as a devotional practice—as a way to call to mind Mary’s motherly protection and to ask for her prayerful assistance.
Some of the Church’s greatest saints were Carmelites, including St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and St. Therese of Lisieux, all of whom are doctors of the Church.
Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, you gave us the scapular, and you protect and care for us as a mother—pray for us!
Image Credit: Image by Notre Dame alumnus Matthew Alderman, who holds exclusive rights to the further distribution and publication of his art. Used here with permission.