June 11
Our Lady of Consolation
St. Barnabas, Apostle
Today's Gospel: Matthew 5:20-26
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| Photo created by Google AI Image Creator. |
Jesus stopped the offering.
The gift is being placed on the altar. He said, wait. Before you bring me that
gift, go. If your brother has something against you, go be reconciled first.
Then come back.
He put relationship before
ritual. Every single time.
St. Barnabas understood this
better than almost anyone in the early Church. His name means Son of
Encouragement, and everything we know about him lives up to it. When Saul of
Tarsus showed up claiming to be a changed man, the entire Church backed away.
Nobody trusted the man who had been hunting Christians for sport. Nobody except
Barnabas. He walked across the room, stood next to Paul, and said, " Trust him. I
believe him.
That one act of courageous
reconciliation changed the history of Christianity.
Sometimes the bravest thing
you can do is walk toward the person everyone else is walking away from.
I have known the particular
pain of a friendship that changed without warning or explanation. No argument.
No defining moment. Just a quiet shift and a door that slowly closed on
something I valued deeply. I was confused. I replayed every conversation, looking
for what I had done wrong, and came up empty. And then came the hurt, the kind
that sits in your chest and doesn't move, because you can't fix what you don't
understand, and you can't apologize for something you never did. I wanted to
reach back. I wanted to understand. Instead, I backed off, I prayed, and I
placed that person's name before God every single day because that was the only
place I knew to bring something too heavy to carry alone. Sometimes
reconciliation doesn't come with a conversation or a clear resolution. Sometimes
it just means choosing every morning not to let the wound become a wall. And
trusting that God sees what you can't explain and loves what you can't fix.
St. Barnabas walked this
earth while Our Lady was still alive. He was part of that first generation of
believers who gathered around her, prayed with her, and were shaped by her
presence. He learned encouragement from a woman who never stopped encouraging, even while standing at the foot of a cross. She knew something about wounds
that wouldn't close. She carried one with her entire life.
And she never let it become a
wall.
Something to sit with today:
Is there a friendship, a
relationship, a door of communications that has been closed without explanation
that you are still carrying, and have you brought it to the Lord, the only person
strong enough to hold it?
There are many people that
pass through our lives, some stay for a season, some stay till our last breath
and some stay for a very short period of time. Our hearts are saddened when we
feel close to someone who no longer wishes to be close to us, may the Lord
guide you through the pain and may He give you the strength to move forward.
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
