6th Sunday after Pentecost

With the talk about the scandal in the Vatican of late, it just goes to show us that we are ALL sinners and susceptible to the wiles of the devil. These who should have known better, especially to be a better witness for us have succumbed to the pleasures and instincts of animals, lowering themselves to the lowest possible denominator of filth. At least it is now out in the open, so maybe we can finally start a healing. This brings me to mention tomorrow's readings and lessons.

We always think of David in the Old Testament. When he was clean, he was the model of Christ to the people in front of God. However, when he became an adulterer and murderer, he needed to repent as we all need to do. He made it, and we can too.

We will hear from the Gospel of St. Mark, and hear about feeding thousands of people with a few loaves(7 to be exact). After following Jesus into the desert for 3 days, they are famished. Voila! 7 loaves of bread are on hand. Jesus will deliver to them another miracle, but they probably won't know it as such. They will have their fill. The number seven is significant for us. This represents the Sacraments. By utilizing them, we will be spiritually filled. By faith these Jews followed Him into the desert, and are repaid for their time. We follow by Faith, and we are filled with Him Himself in the Holy Eucharist, which sustains us.

St. Ambrose comments on this Sunday's Gospel. He takes notice of the number 7. The seventh day god rested, and therefore we should also. The seven Sacraments restore us to life. The seventh beatitude in the sermon on the mount 'refers to the peace-makers, or peaceable, as deserving to be called, most truly, the sons of God. It is in them alone that is fully developed the germ of divine sonship, which is put into the soul at Baptism. Thanks to the silence to which the passions have been reduced, their spirit, now master of the flesh, and itself subject to God, is a stranger to those inward storms, those sudden changes, and even those inequalities of temperature, which are all unfavorable to the growth of the precious seed; warmed by the Sun of justice in an atmosphere which is ever serene and unclouded, there is no obstacle to its coming up, there is no ill-shapen growth; absorbing all the human moisture of this earth wherein it is set, assimilating the very earth itself, it soon leaves nothing else to be seen in these men but the divine, for they have become, in the eyes of the Father Who is in heaven, a most faithful image of His first-born Son.'

St. Ambrose continues: '...take notice of the condition specified in our Gospel, as necessary for those who aspire to such nourishment as that. It is not to lazy people, nor to them that live in cities, nor to them that are great in worldly honours, but to them that seek Christ in the desert, that is given the heavenly nourishment: they alone who hunger after it are received by Christ in to a participation of the Word and of God's kingdom.'

Our beloved Abbot Gueranger adds: All the truth, all the goodness, all the beauty of created things, are incapable of satisfying any single soul; it must have God. So long as man does not understand this, everything good or true that his senses and his reason can provide him with, so far from being able to satiate him, is ordinarily nothing more than a distraction from the one object that can make him the happy being he was created to be, and a hindrance to his living the true life which God willed him to attain.

We are also ending the month of June, the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Maybe we can open our hearts to be like His, which was opened on the Cross, and therefore do the things that please Him, instead of our own pleasures.

Like He said: 'Ask, and ye shall receive.' So, we ask.