SATURDAY OF WEEK 14 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

It is a blessing for you
when they insult you for bearing the name of Christ,
for the Spirit of God rests on you. 1 PET 4:14

GENESIS 49:29-33,50:15-26

My Soul's Beloved,

No one can thwart the plans of God. Yes, we are sinners and we sin grievously and often, but God hates the death of the sinner and desires that all come to the knowledge of the Truth that was revealed in You, His Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and be saved. Joseph's brothers represent all of us who sin and are afraid of the consequences of our offences against God. We are helpless, for we know that we deserve death and separation from the God of love who created us in love. But for Your sake, Beloved, for the sake of Your sorrowful passion and for the Precious Blood that You shed for us all, God has pity, mercy, and compassion on us. God makes Himself vulnerable when He sees us bathed in Your Blood and the price paid for our salvation. For Your sake, He will forgive all our wrongs, all our sins, and He will cast our sins behind His back, into the depths of the ocean of His mercy and will remember them no more.

Joseph's response to his brothers' plea for forgiveness and mercy reflects in some measure God's response to us when we repent and come to Him and You with humble and contrite hearts, resolving to sin no more. We are assured that a humble and contrite heart, You will not spurn. So we take courage, Lord, we approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation with humility and hope, we meet You here in the wonderful Sacrament of healing and grace, and You restore our dignity to us, embrace us, and welcome us home. Thank You, Lord.

Seeing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, ‘What if Joseph intends to treat us as enemies and repay us in full for all the wrong we did him?’ So they sent this message to Joseph: ‘Before your father died he gave us this order: “You must say to Joseph: Oh forgive your brothers their crime and their sin and all the wrong they did you.” Now therefore, we beg you, forgive the crime of the servants of your father’s God.’ Joseph wept at the message they sent to him.
His brothers came themselves and fell down before him. ‘We present ourselves before you’ they said ‘as your slaves.’ But Joseph answered them, ‘Do not be afraid; is it for me to put myself in God’s place? The evil you planned to do me has by God’s design been turned to good, that he might bring about, as indeed he has, the deliverance of a numerous people. So you need not be afraid; I myself will provide for you and your dependants.’ In this way he reassured them with words that touched their hearts.

PSALM 104(105):1-4,6-7

Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.

Give thanks to the Lord, tell his name,
make known his deeds among the peoples.
O sing to him, sing his praise;
tell all his wonderful works!

Be proud of his holy name,
let the hearts that seek the Lord rejoice.
Consider the Lord and his strength;
constantly seek his face.

O children of Abraham, his servant,
O sons of the Jacob he chose.
He, the Lord, is our God:
his judgements prevail in all the earth.

Seek the Lord, you who are poor, and your hearts will revive.

MATTHEW 10:24-33

My Soul's Beloved,

You ask nothing of us that You have not done or experienced. You do not ask us to follow You by taking different paths, but You invite us to walk in Your footsteps and to imitate You closely. You have not left us without not only showing us the way but walking in it. The Way to the Kingdom of Heaven can only be reached by way of Gethsemane and Golgotha. There are no shortcuts; there is no easy way. Unless we are prepared to lay down our lives for the sake of the Gospel as You did, Lord, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

All that You instructed the Twelve has been handed down either through the written word, the Sacred Scriptures, or orally through Apostolic Tradition. This deposit of faith is kept in the treasure of the Church's memory and safeguarded by the Holy Spirit according to Your promise to Your Apostles, that the Holy Spirit will remind them of all that You told them. And St. John testifies that not everything You said and did is written down, for the whole earth could not contain these books. It is the Church guided by the Holy Spirit that hands down this Sacred Deposit of faith from one generation of believers to the next. We must hand the faith to our children and they to theirs. We are responsible as adults to take our faith seriously, grow in it but studying it and being able to defend it. We cannot do so if we are ignorant. 

Ignorant Catholics are the greatest enemies of the faith, for through their colossal ignorance, they are unaware of the power of doctrinal Truths and are unable to defend the faith against those who come against them better prepared to attack them, even though their positions are based on lies and deceit.

Grant every baptized Catholic this grace, O Lord, to strengthen our faith by educating ourselves so we are not destroyed by the first hint of opposition and attack. Rather, we will be able to face our enemies boldly, prepared to die if necessary, for we know in whom we have placed our hope.

Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘The disciple is not superior to his teacher, nor the slave to his master. It is enough for the disciple that he should grow to be like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, what will they not say of his household?
‘Do not be afraid of them therefore. For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.
‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.
‘So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.’

ST. BENEDICT, ABBOT, FRIDAY OF WEEK 14 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

When the Spirit of truth comes
he will lead you to the complete truth,
and he will remind you of all I have said to you. JN 16:13,14:26

GENESIS 46:1-7,28-30

My Soul's Beloved,

These events that took place in salvation history are a perfect allegory of our sojourn on earth as we experience different spiritual seasons in our lives. We carry all our possessions (the baggage of all our life's experiences) wherever we go. 

Our whole life on earth is lived in exile, for we are created for the Kingdom of God. But we are not alone. We belong to a community of believers. We belong to the Church. We are members of Your Body. We are Your bride, and You are our Bridegroom. We are one in You, and we are one with each other. All that we do for good or ill has a direct effect on the rest of the members of Your Body.  

Lord God, Savior of the world, no matter how far we wander from You, accompany us, do not abandon us while we live among godless people, may we not be tainted by their idolatrous practices, and bring us back in safety to Yourself so we may not die but live with You eternally. Thank You, Lord. 

Israel left Canaan with his possessions, and reached Beersheba. There he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to Israel in a vision at night, ‘Jacob, Jacob’, he said. ‘I am here’, he replied. ‘I am God, the God of your father’, he continued. ‘Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. I myself will go down to Egypt with you. I myself will bring you back again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.’ Then Jacob left Beersheba. Israel’s sons conveyed their father Jacob, their little children and their wives in the waggons Pharaoh had sent to fetch him.
Taking their livestock and all that they had acquired in the land of Canaan, they went to Egypt, Jacob and all his family with him: his sons and his grandsons, his daughters and his grand-daughters, in a word, all his children he took with him to Egypt.
Israel sent Judah ahead to Joseph, so that the latter might present himself to him in Goshen. When they arrived in the land of Goshen, Joseph had his chariot made ready and went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen. As soon as he appeared he threw his arms round his neck and for a long time wept on his shoulder. Israel said to Joseph, ‘Now I can die, now that I have seen you again, and seen you still alive.’

PSALM 36(37):3-4,18-19,27-28,39-40

The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.

If you trust in the Lord and do good,
then you will live in the land and be secure.
If you find your delight in the Lord,
he will grant your heart’s desire.

He protects the lives of the upright,
their heritage will last for ever.
They shall not be put to shame in evil days,
in time of famine their food shall not fail.

Then turn away from evil and do good
and you shall have a home for ever;
for the Lord loves justice
and will never forsake his friends.

The salvation of the just comes from the Lord,
their stronghold in time of distress.
The Lord helps them and delivers them
and saves them: for their refuge is in him.

The salvation of the just comes from the Lord.

MATTHEW 10:16-23

My Soul's Beloved,

It has always been so, and You warned the Apostles that if they persecuted You, they would be persecuted as well. They did not stop at persecution, Beloved, but they committed all kinds of atrocities against You before they crucified You. If they did it to God, can we expect anything less?

Beloved, we read and hear all the time of Christians being specifically targeted and persecuted. They are imprisoned, flogged, humiliated, paraded naked, and often put to death in barbaric ways, and from the very beginning, martyrs have taken their cue from You, the Master, the Teacher, the Son of God, and have accepted all manner of evil perpetrated against them in imitation of You.  

Let us stop the hand-wringing when we hear of or read such reports or witness them; instead, let us praise God who gives them the courage and the words to be powerful witnesses to the Good News and to Truth. Above all, let us pray that if God so blesses us with occasions to suffer for Your sake and the sake of the Gospel, that we too may be filled with the Holy Spirit and with courage and boldness to prefer to die rather than deny You, Our Lord and our God.

Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘Remember, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.

‘Beware of men: they will hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you. ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved. If they persecute you in one town, take refuge in the next; and if they persecute you in that, take refuge in another. I tell you solemnly, you will not have gone the round of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’