20.02.25 Mengenal Yesus Lebih Dalam: Perjalanan Iman dan Transformasi (

Thursday 6th week in ordinary time "Mk 8:27-33" Jesus asked his disciples, "Who do men say that I am?" And they told him, "John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others one of the prophets." And he asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Christ." Jesus' Apostles had seen Him eating, sleeping, laughing, crying, healing, performing miracles… they had heard Him talking to peoples of all walks of life: shepherds, farmers, housewives, fishermen, centurions, tax collectors, outcasts, sick people, lepers and the possessed - and scribes, Pharisees... If Jesus had different sides, they had seen all of them. They knew Him well. What about me? How well do I know Him? How well do I know His Life, His Words, His Deeds, His Death? Meditating on the Gospel allows us to know God better and to start a personal relationship with Him. Ernest Gordon wrote a book entitled 'Through the Valley of the Kwai' in which he describes his experience as a prisoner in Thailand during WWII. He worked on a railway which the Japanese were building. Over 12,000 allied prisoners died of starvation there. Gordon says an added enemy to the Japanese were some of the prisoners. Some got carried away by the law of the jungle. They stole from each other and informed on each other to win favours from the Japanese. Morale was at rock bottom. So two men whose faith kept them going decided to try and do something about it. They organized Bible reading and discussion groups. They met at night and at first the numbers were small but after a short while the numbers grew into the hundreds. When reading the Bible they noticed that Jesus faced the same problems as they did; he often had no place to lay His Head, no food, no friends in high places. He too had known weariness from too much toil; the suffering, rejection and disappointments that are part of life. Everything about Jesus began to make sense. The prisoners underwent a change of heart and stopped destroying one another as they had been doing. Reading Jesus' Life and Death, using it for prayer and discussion, transformed an entire prison camp. Mary, Mother of Christ, do not let one day go by without my reading your Son’s life in the Gospel, without meditating on it, without getting to know Him better and learning from Him.