St Anthony

Music

St Anthony | Monday 17 January 2022

Today is Monday the 17 January, the feast of St Antony in the 2nd week of Ordinary Time.

Josh Garrels sings, ‘Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus’. As you enter into prayer now, take a moment to do just that…to turn your eyes upon Jesus…letting everything around you grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.

Today’s reading is from the Gospel of Mark.

Mark 2:18-22

Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting; and people came and said to him, ‘Why do John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?’ Jesus said to them, ‘The wedding-guests cannot fast while the bridegroom is with them, can they? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day.

‘No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old cloak; otherwise, the patch pulls away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and the wine is lost, and so are the skins; but one puts new wine into fresh wineskins.’

Jesus is under attack because he and his disciples are not doing “religious” things like fasting. What is your own reaction to the idea of “religious things” and fasting?

How do you imagine this imagery of the “wedding guests” and the “bridegroom”? What do these images evoke in you?

Now listen again to the reading and ask yourself: what is Jesus saying about “new” and “old”?

Finally, having heard the passage, what thoughts are rising in your heart? Can you express them in a prayer to God?

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.