Thursday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time ‘b’

Mk 9:41-50

Whatever causes you to sin -- cut it off. This is what Jesus is telling us today. We know this gospel very well. “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna, into the unquenchable fire.” Jesus here uses a figure of speech. But what he really wants us to do is to cut off our temptations, our sins, our bad behaviors, and our addictions. It may seem easy, but you know very well that it is extremally difficult to cut off our sinful attachments. Perhaps we should make an examination of conscience today and think about those things that cause us to sin and try to cut them off. If there is more than one, just start with only one and slowly try to eliminate it from your life. At the end it is “better for you to enter into the Kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna.”