July 17
Our Lady of Campitelli
Italy (524)
Gospel: Matthew 12:1-8
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| Image created using Google AI Image Creator. |
Today’s Gospel
has the Pharisees scandalized that Jesus’s hungry disciples pick grain on the
Sabbath, and Jesus’s answer cuts straight to the point: “I desire mercy, not
sacrifice.” The Sabbath was made to serve people, not the other way around, and
Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, has the authority to say so.
We can turn
almost anything religious into a rule that misses its own purpose, the right
posture in prayer, the right words at the right time, the right amount of guilt
for falling short. Rules have their place, but Jesus keeps redirecting
attention back to mercy as the actual point. A faith that follows every rule
but forgets mercy has missed what the rules were for.
Choose “Mercy”
over your technical correctness today, in at least one place where you’ve been
tempted to choose the opposite, especially towards yourself, when you fall
short of a standard you set. And towards someone else, when they break a rule,
you take it seriously. Jesus didn’t say the rules don’t matter; He said mercy is
what they were always supposed to serve.
Today, the
Marian calendar shares Our Lady of Campitelli in Italy, dated to 524, a devotion
that has endured so much, but not through rigid formality but through
generations who simply kept turning to her in mercy and need. Our Lady never
once turned away an imperfect prayer for being imperfect. Something to think
about: Where have you been choosing a rule over the mercy it was meant to
protect?
Rosary Man Jim 🌹
Freely given. Freely shared.
