In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Christ, our King, Thy Kingdom come!
Preparatory prayer (to put me in the presence of God)
Give me the grace, Lord, to make an experience..., a real experience of your love.
Gospel of the day (to guide your meditation)
From the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark 6, 34-44
At that time, when Jesus came ashore, he saw a great multitude waiting for him, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.
When it was already evening, his disciples came to him and said, “We are in an uninhabited area and it is already very late. Send the people away so that they may go to the surrounding villages and towns and buy something to eat”. He replied, “You give them something to eat. They said to him, ”Shall we go and buy two hundred dinars of bread to feed them? He asked them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see. When they had found out, they said, ”Five loaves and two fish.
Then Jesus ordered the people to sit down in groups on the green grass, and they arranged themselves in groups of a hundred and fifty. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus raised his eyes to heaven, blessed God, broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to distribute; he did the same with the two fish.
They all ate their fill, and with the leftover bread and fish they gathered they filled twelve baskets. Those who ate were five thousand men.
Word of the Lord.
Meditate on what God tells you in the Gospel
We are all hungry and thirsty for something. Our heart has a space that is not easy to fill and that many times we try to satiate with passing things. It is very easy to deceive ourselves and convince ourselves that with these things we will be able to quench our thirst and hunger... and maybe we succeed for a while, but if we do not fill it with the right things, that need will become more and more present in our life.
We all have that space that only Jesus can fill and fulfill with his love. It is not easy to give him that space because we do not see him and we do not know if he can really do it, but when we decide to give ourselves to him, grace multiplies and surprises us by how it fills us and how it touches our hearts.
«Jesus“ disciples often demonstrate that they have no compassion, as in this case, when faced with the problem of feeding the multitudes. They basically say: ”Let them manage...“. It is a common attitude among us humans, also for religious and even worshipful people. We wash our hands. The role we occupy is not enough to make us compassionate, as evidenced by the behavior of the priest and the Levite who, seeing a dying man at the side of the road, passed by, making a detour. They must have thought to themselves: ”It doesn't concern me“. There is always some pretext, some justification for looking the other way. And when a church person becomes an official, this is the most bitter result. There are always justifications; sometimes they are codified and give rise to ”institutional discards“, as in the case of lepers: ”Of course, they have to be out, it's the right thing to do». This is how it was thought, and this is how it is thought. From this very, all-too-human attitude, structures of non-compassion are also derived."
(Homily of H.H. Francis, October 5, 2019).
Dialogue with Christ
This is the most important part of your prayer, prepare yourself to talk with much love with the One who loves you.
Purpose
Propose a personal one. The one that involves the most love in response to the Beloved... or, if you believe that this is what God is asking of you, live what is suggested below.
Take time out of your day to see if you are filling your heart with other loves than the love of Jesus.
Farewell
We thank You, Lord, for all Your benefits, You who live and reign forever and ever.
Amen.
Christ, our King!
Thy Kingdom come!
Most prudent Virgin, Mary, Mother of the Church.
Pray for us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
