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Word of the day

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Date05/02/2025
Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr

Reading of the day

A reading form the Letter of St. Paul to the Hebrews
12:4-7, 11-15

Brothers and sisters:
In your struggle against sin
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
You have also forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as children:

My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord
or lose heart when reproved by him;
for whom the Lord loves, he disciplines;
he scourges every son he acknowledges.

Endure your trials as “discipline”;
God treats you as his sons.
For what "son” is there whom his father does not discipline?
At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain,
yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness
to those who are trained by it.

So strengthen your drooping hands and your weak knees.
Make straight paths for your feet,
that what is lame may not be dislocated but healed.

Strive for peace with everyone,
and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
See to it that no one be deprived of the grace of God,
that no bitter root spring up and cause trouble,
through which many may become defiled.

Gospel of the day

From the Gospel according to Mark
Mark 6:1-6

Jesus departed from there and came to his native place,
accompanied by his disciples.
When the sabbath came he began to teach in the synagogue,
and many who heard him were astonished.
They said, “Where did this man get all this?
What kind of wisdom has been given him?
What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands!
Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary,
and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon?
And are not his sisters here with us?”
And they took offense at him.
Jesus said to them,
“A prophet is not without honor except in his native place
and among his own kin and in his own house.”
So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,
apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them.
He was amazed at their lack of faith.

Words of the Holy Father

The obstacle preventing these people from recognizing God’s presence in Jesus is the fact that he is human, simply Joseph the carpenter’s son: how can God, the Almighty, reveal himself in the fragility of human flesh? How can an omnipotent and strong God, who created the earth and freed his people from slavery, become weak enough to come in the flesh and lower himself to wash the disciples’ feet? This is the scandal. Brothers and sisters: a faith founded on a human God, who lowers himself towards humanity, who cares for it, who is moved by our wounds, who takes on our weariness, who for us is broken like bread. (…) is a scandal. (…) We need the scandal of faith, a faith rooted in the God who became man and, therefore, a human faith, a faith of flesh, that enters history, that touches people’s lives, that heals broken hearts, that becomes a leaven of hope and a seed of a new world. (Homily, Trieste, 7 July 2024)