Saturday 17 January 2026
St Antony
1 Samuel 9:1-4, 17-19, 10:1. Lord, your strength gives joy to the king – Ps 20(21):2-7. Mark 2:13-17.
The Bread of Life heals
The importance of being proactive comes to us in many sayings. For example, ‘A stitch in time’ or ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’. Jesus’ remark about the sick needing the doctor not the healthy strikes as simple and profoundly wise. Pope Francis expanded on this very theme when he described the Eucharist not as the reward of saints but as the ‘Bread of sinners’.
Celebrating the Solemnity of Corpus Christi in 2021, he said that each time we receive the Bread of Life, the Lord comes to give new meaning to our fragilities. Pope Francis said the Lord ‘gives us the courage to go outside of ourselves and bend down with love toward the fragility of others. As God does with us: This is the logic of the Eucharist: we receive Jesus who loves us and heals our fragilities in order to love others and help them in their fragilities.’
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