Is Self-Care Sinful?

Friday, July 17, 2026

Is 38: 1-6, 21-22, 7-8; Mt 12: 1-8

Today’s Gospel highlights the fact that an act of self-care is not a sinful act. 

The text presents the scene of the hungry disciples of Jesus walking through a field of grain and plucking some heads of grain and eating them. When the Pharisees see this, they immediately accuse Jesus’ disciples of breaking the Sabbath law. 

Jesus confronts them on two counts. 

1. Jesus reminds them that an act like plucking heads of grain and eating them, especially when one is hungry, is neither extraordinary nor scandalous. Instead, Jesus refers to it as a spontaneous response of hungry people satisfying a basic human need. However, we are only shocked to find the distorted vision of the Pharisees in judging Jesus’ disciples and condemning them in the name of God. They remain silent only when Jesus confronts them with scriptural examples. When legalism and rigidity prevent us from responding to genuine human need, we have misunderstood God’s will. 

2. For Jesus, attending to genuine human needs is not selfishness but responsible self-care. After all, Jesus commands, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 22:39). Indeed, the commandment to love our neighbor presupposes a healthy love of self. In this way, Jesus extends the measure of self-love to shape our love of neighbors. Thus, defending the action of his disciples through the notion of self-care, Jesus lets us see that refusing to eat under such circumstances (when one is consumed by hunger) would only make a person unnecessarily legalistic and unreasonable – a rigidity that the good God Himself would never demand. 

Thus, Jesus wants us to understand that Scripture must be read with wisdom, compassion, and an understanding of God’s intention. In the name of religion, we should never twist God’s generous will and unconditional love towards humanity. 

Let us pray that we may understand the very heart of God, who desires mercy more than sacrifice.

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar