1 Samuel 1:24-28, 1 Samuel 2:1, 4-8, Luke 1:46-56

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

1 Samuel 1:24-28, 1 Samuel 2:1, 4-8, Luke 1:46-56

1 Samuel 1:24-28

My Beloved, Samuel is the child of many tears  and great longing. Despised because she had no children her husband who loved her very much tried to console her. She cried out to God ardently imploring Him to hear and bless her and remove her shame at being childless.

Every child is a gift from God and yet in our culture today they are seen as a right to be had at any cost if we desire them or to have them at a time and in a way that is convenient to our agenda or even to murder them in the womb if they are unwanted. Swinging from one extreme to another, children are seen as a choice and its worth is determined by everything other than the intrinsic value of the child itself. 

Hannah, like so many women in the Bible who were unable to bear a child and who prayed night and day to conceive were blessed with a baby, some were conceived miraculously (every baby is a miracle.)  It is God who opens the womb and causes life to be.  Hannah gratefully and generously gives back to God the son of her longing, so he can serve the Lord all the days of his life.

This ought to be the prayer of every parent.  Children are blessings we receive from God. They belong to Him and are given to us as a sacred trust. After fulfilling our duty to love, raise and nurture them in the ways of God we must gladly return them back to Him content that we have done our part.

1 Samuel 2:1, 4-8

My Beloved, we can either exult with joy like Hannah as so many in Scripture have done and never more gloriously than Your Own Mama, at the gift of a child, or we can rue the day they were born as so many have done when we have failed to raise them in the love and fear of the Lord as we ought. 

When You bless us with children we have a grave duty to receive them with love and raise them in the shadow of the the Presence of God.  Our home must be the first church where our children learn all that is good and holy and where the building blocks of their faith are learned at the knees of their parents.  It is only when we fulfill our duty by raising God-fearing children we too can sing our own Magnificat like Hannah, Zechariah and Your Mama Mary did. 

Luke 1:46-56

My Beloved, Mary's hymn of praise to God contains the exultant joy of all longing and hope fulfilled by God in the hearts of all people from the first to the last. This is why the Magnificat will resonate and throb with love and gratitude till the end of time because the promises made by God have come to pass.  From age to age we see how people of faith believed against the greatest odds that God will do exactly as He has promised even when it seemed that there was no hope and everything conspired against the promises being fulfilled.

God can level mountains, fill up valleys, part the seas and cause life where none was possible.  He casts down the haughty and boastful and raises the littlest ones seating them on thrones.  We have an awesome God and those who trust Him will sing His praises in triumphant and exultant joy for our God saves.

PRAISE THE LORD!!!!