Daily Reflection Memorial of Saint Boniface, Bishop and Martyr

As a teacher, I sympathize with Jesus in Mark’s reading today! How often I

encountered teenagers yearning to get their point across with flawed reasoning. Like the Sadducees they wanted to be proven right. Instead of listening to and learning from Jesus, the Sadducees want to pull one over on him. So, what is it in us human beings that always wants to be on top? Not only does Jesus not brag or claim priority, he serves. His lifestyle seeks out the needy, the hurt, the lonely. Because we have made a commitment to follow Jesus, we may have to adjust our own value system. Maybe our line of thought and our lifestyle need a spring housecleaning.

Today the Church remembers St. Boniface. In accounts of his life, Boniface has

been referred to as the St. Paul of the Dark Ages. Baptized Winfred, Boniface became a monk and later he was ordained a priest. He felt the call to spread the message of Jesus and was sent to Germany. Pope Gregory II commissioned him to evangelize Germany and also changed Winfred’s name to Boniface. Like Paul he spared nothing in his life to spread the good news of the gospel among the warring peoples prone to idolatry. Because of his personality and spiritual gifts, Boniface attracted people to Jesus’ way of living in the gospel.

In his letter to Timothy, Paul encourages us to live those gifts and virtues we have already been given. Like Boniface, we claim our own personality: our own talents, our own inclination to sin. Also, like Boniface, we are loved by God who encourages each of us to use our personal talents to decipher false pandering from gospel truth in advertising, political talking heads, and personal conversations. We always remember that we are loved unconditionally by a God who cares for us, for our nation, and for our world. God needs each of us to be conduits in spreading the Good News, the way God chose Boniface.



“O Mary, Mother of the living:

grant that all who believe in your Son

may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty

and love to the people of our time.

Obtain from them the grace to accept the Gospel

as a gift ever new,

the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout our lives

and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely,

in order to build, together with all people of good will,

the civilization of truth and love,

to the praise and glory of God,

the Creator and lover of life.”

--St. John Paul II