Daily Gospel Reflection for August 29, 2022

Join us as we reflect, ponder, and pray together inspired by today's Gospel.

Today's Gospel: Mark 6:17-29

God has a way of writing straight with crooked lines. Twenty-five years ago today, I made promises to God as a consecrated lay woman. I had been raised in a conservative Catholic home and thought that this was my calling. I longed to live a saintly life and to love God. Yet after struggling for three-and-a-half years, I knew something just wasn’t right and I discerned it wasn’t my calling. I lived the single life for 11 years after coming home, and this year my husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with five kids in tow.

In the back of my mind on that day two-and-a-half decades ago, I wondered if it was a bad omen (not that I really believed in omens) being consecrated on a day a saint got his head chopped off. But in the end, it truly came to pass that God had other plans for my life.

The Gospel passage does not focus on John the Baptist, rather on Herod’s imprudent reward, Herodias’ evil request, and Herod’s subsequent internal conflict.

What must John have been thinking in those final moments when they approached him with an axe telling him he was going to die? Was he filled with fear? Or was he happy to finally be able to meet God face to face after being a good and faithful servant?

He surely had a “crooked lines” kind of life. Being born to an old barren couple, being related to the Son of God, living out in the desert, eating locusts and wild honey, baptizing with water, preaching repentance, and being thrown in jail, only to die a martyr’s death.

Perhaps your life appears similarly crazy, yet each one of us are called to follow Him, even unto death.

Ponder:

In what ways are you called to follow Christ even though it may appear His path is "crooked?"

Pray:

Lord, grant me the courage to follow You, even unto death.

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God has a way of writing straight with crooked lines. #dailygospel

Copyright 2022 Tami Urcia