Tuesday, February 21, 2012 (Weekday)

REFLECTION FOR TODAY
You must realize that when the Father shows His works to Christ's members, it is to Christ that He shows them. He shows them to the members through the Head. Suppose you wish to take hold of an object with your eyes closed. Your hand does not know where to go, yet your hand is your member. Open your eyes and your hand will now see where it must go. The member follows the way indicated by its head!
-- St. Augustine

READINGS FOR TODAY
First Reading: James 4:1-10
(Friendship with the World)
1 Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members?
2 You lust, and don’t have. You kill, covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
3 You ask, and don’t receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it for your pleasures.
4 You adulterers and adulteresses, don’t you know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. 
5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Be subject therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
9 Lament, mourn, and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he will exalt you.
Psalms: Psalm 55:7-11, 23
7 Behold, then I would wander far off. I would lodge in the wilderness.” Selah.
8 “I would hurry to a shelter from the stormy wind and tempest.”
9 Confuse them, Lord, and confound their language, For I have seen violence and strife in the city.
10 Day and night they prowl around on its walls. Malice and abuse are also within her.
11 Destructive forces are within her. Threats and lies don’t depart from her streets.
23 But you, God, will bring them down into the pit of destruction. Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days, But I will trust in you.
Gospel: Mark 9:30-37
(Jesus Speaks Again about His Death/ Who Is the Greatest?)
30 They went out from there, and passed through Galilee. He didn’t want anyone to know it.
31 For he was teaching his disciples, and said to them, “The Son of Man is being handed over to the hands of men, and they will kill him; and when he is killed, on the third day he will rise again.”
32 But they didn’t understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him.
33 He came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing among yourselves on the way?”
34 But they were silent, for they had disputed one with another on the way about who was the greatest.
35 He sat down, and called the twelve; and he said to them, “If any man wants to be first, he shall be last of all, and servant of all.”
36 He took a little child, and set him in the midst of them. Taking him in his arms, he said to them,
37 “Whoever receives one such little child in my name, receives me, and whoever receives me, doesn’t receive me, but him who sent me.”