Daily Catholic Lectio. Sat, 24 January ‘26. Bread of Tears

Daily Catholic Lectio

Sat, 24 January ‘26

Second Week in Ordinary Time, Saturday

Saint Francis de Sales, Memorial

2 Sam 1:1-4, 11-12, 19, 23-27. Mk 3:20-21

Bread of Tears

“You have fed them with the bread of tears; you have given them tears to drink in full measure” (Ps 80:5).

The psalm uses a powerful image. Bread is our daily food; tears usually come only at difficult moments. When tears become bread, sorrow itself becomes part of daily life. Yet this image does not speak of despair alone. It points to a process through which God shapes, matures, and deepens the human heart.

In the first reading, David eats this bread of tears on hearing of the death of Saul and Jonathan. His grief is sincere and generous. Saul had been jealous of David and had even tried to kill him, yet David remembers the good. Saul welcomed him into his house and gave him a place in his court. Jonathan, from the beginning, loved David as a true friend. David’s lament praises their valour, courage, bond, and love. These tears are not signs of weakness; they reveal David’s inner maturity. He has learned to see people not only through their wounds and failures, but through the good they carried within them.

In the Gospel, we meet another kind of hunger. Jesus and his disciples have no time even to eat. The people say he is “out of his mind”—literally, “outside himself.” His own family comes to take charge of him. Just after establishing a new family of twelve apostles, his natural family appears to block the mission. Yet for Jesus, ministry itself becomes food. As he says elsewhere, “My food is to do the will of the one who sent me” (Jn 4:34). What nourishes him is not comfort, but fidelity to his mission.

Here the two readings meet. When tears become our bread, we grow in depth and maturity. When work done in love becomes our bread, lives are transformed. Sorrow purifies our vision; mission gives meaning to our sacrifice.

Today we remember Saint Francis de Sales, who taught through ‘Introduction to the Devout Life’ that holiness is not extraordinary but ordinary—meant for everyday life. Holiness, he insisted, should be our daily food.

May today’s Word teach us to accept the bread of tears without bitterness and to receive the bread of daily fidelity with joy. In both, God is quietly nourishing us for a life that gives hope to others.

Fr. Yesu Karunanidhi

Archdiocese of Madurai

Missionary of Mercy