The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Monday, Memorial of St. Boniface, Bishop & Martyr, 05 June 2023 Tobit 1:3, 2:1-8 ><))))*> + ><))))*> + ><))))*> Mark 12:1-12
Glory and praise to you, God our loving Father for enabling us to cover this first half of 2023! Grant us the grace of perseverance like Tobit in the first reading who kept on doing what is good despite the many beatings, literally and figuratively speaking, he had had in helping his countrymen in a foreign land.
I, Tobit, have walked all the days of my life on the paths of truth and righteousness. I performed many charitable works for my kinsmen and my people who had been deported with me to Nineveh, in Assyria… Once the neighbors mocked me, saying to one another: “He is still not afraid! Once before he was hunted down for execution because of this very thing; yet now that he has escaped, here he is again burying the dead!”
Tobit 1:3, 2:8
Teach us to persevere, Lord, to have the endurance and stamina in surviving the toughest conditions to emerge better persons, better disciples who help those in need and neglected like Tobit and his son Tobias. Or like St. Boniface who, despite his so many successes in Germany insisted in returning to Frisia in the Netherlands where he had first failed as a missionary only to be massacred later with his disciples. Many times, death awaits perseverance like your Son Jesus Christ, the heir of the vineyard owner in today's parable.
But still, O God, perseverance in you pays so well if not for the ones persevering but most especially for those their efforts are directed. Most of all, perseverance teaches us to never give up, to never quit, for every effort in your glory matters so much. Amen.
