Mark 7:14-23
Jesus summoned the crowd again and said to them, "Hear me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that enters one from outside can defile that person; but the things that come out from within are what defile."
When he got home away from the crowd his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, "Are even you likewise without understanding? Do you not realize that everything that goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters not the heart but the stomach and passes out into the latrine?" (Thus he declared all foods clean.) "But what comes out of the man, that is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile."
Dawg's thought:
Today's prayer intention is for a conversion of heart for those who are in the media, that they can use their gifts and talents to glorify God.
Defile:
1. To make filthy or dirty; pollute
2. To debase the pureness or excellence of; corrupt
3. To profane or sully
4. To make unclean or unfit for ceremonial use; desecrate
5. To violate the chastity of.
Our Redeemer did not come to rescue us bad, evil people. He came to redeem us from ourselves. A great saint that comes to mind who lived out holiness in the face of oppression (and there are many) is St. Maximilian Kolbe.
From consecration.com:
"In 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "martyr of charity" in 1982. St. Maximilian Kolbe is considered a patron of journalists, families, prisoners, the pro-life movement and the chemically addicted."
Jesus came to redeem us from ourselves so that we may live the call to holiness. Today, look into your own heart and find out how you can live the calling to holiness better so that insteading of "defiling", you can help to build up the Kingdom of God here on earth. Take care and God Bless.
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