Thursday of the Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
February 1, 2024

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/020124.cfm

Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as February’s deep season unrolls, we are just about two weeks away from the beginning of Lent. Our first readings during this time will give a little taste of 1 Kings and then briefly shift to James’s epistle before we pick up the treasured readings of the Lenten Season.

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The passage today bears a royal gravity. After preparing his son Solomon for kingship, David solemnly dies.

Keep the mandate of the LORD, your God, following his ways
and observing his statutes, commands, ordinances, and decrees
as they are written in the law of Moses,
that you may succeed in whatever you do,
wherever you turn, and the LORD may fulfill
the promise he made on my behalf….

… David rested with his ancestors and was buried in the City of David.
The length of David’s reign over Israel was forty years:
he reigned seven years in Hebron
and thirty-three years in Jerusalem.

Solomon was seated on the throne of his father David,
with his sovereignty firmly established.

1 Kings 2; 3-4;10-12

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David’s advice to Solomon is basically this: there is work to be done for God and God’s People. And now it’s your responsibility. Keep the course!

In our Gospel, Jesus gives the same sort of mandate to this disciples:

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two
and gave them authority over unclean spirits.
He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick
–no food, no sack, no money in their belts.

Mark 6:7-8

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The disciples are ready. It is now their turn to spread the Gospel and to continue the ministry that they have learned at Jesus’s side:

So they went off and preached repentance.
The Twelve drove out many demons,
and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Mark 6:12-13

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If any of us are wondering what we are supposed to do today for the Reign of God, our answer may be somewhere in these readings as we pray them with an open heart.

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Poetry: The Poem of Tecumseh – Tecumseh (1768 –1813) was a Shawnee chief and warrior who promoted resistance to the expansion of the United States onto Native American lands. A persuasive orator, Tecumseh traveled widely, forming a Native American confederacy and promoting intertribal unity. Even though his efforts to unite Native Americans ended with his death in the War of 1812, he became an iconic folk hero in American, Indigenous, and Canadian popular history. (Wikipedia)

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Music: Heal the World – Michael Jackson