DGeMs- Daily Gospel eMessage
Dear Friend in the Lord,
Mercy, not Sacrifice: In today’s Gospel, Jesus reprimanded the Pharisees when He said, “What I want is mercy and not sacrifice”. Ponder on, “If we follow rituals and say prayers, but do not have compassion for the poor and needy, then our faith is superficial and hypocritical because our rituals and prayers must be shown in deeds of God’s Mercy.”
Fr Philip Heng, S.J.
Matthew 12:1-4,6-8
Jesus took a walk through the cornfields one Sabbath day. His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them. The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the Sabbath.’ But he said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God and they ate the loaves of the offering although neither he nor his followers were permitted to eat them, but only the priests?
‘Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple. And if you had understood the meaning of the words: Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the blameless. For the Son of man is master of the Sabbath.’