FRIDAY OF THE THIRTY-FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME - 2020

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Whoever keeps the word of Christ,
the love of God is truly perfected in him.. 1JN 2:5

PHILIPPIANS 3:17-4:1

My Beloved, Soul of my soul,

As members of Your Body, we hold ourselves up to a different standard, a divine standard not the standard of the world. Yet our attempts at doing so have been woefully inadequate. We have chosen wrongly, we have sought to model our lives on false teachers and leaders. We are self-indulgent, lazy, and ignorant of the things of heaven, the things that last, the things that are eternal. 

All that St. Paul says to his flock in Phillipi is also relevant to us for although we call ourselves Catholic and Christian we live as enemies rather than members of Your Body, and as brothers and sisters of the family of God. We have become so caught up in the world we have forgotten that we are only wayfarers and pilgrims, this is not our home. Every day in every way we ought to grow more and more like You until that glorious day when You will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of your glorious body. 

PSALM 122:1-5

My Beloved, Soul of my soul,

You have established Your dwelling place on earth and even more intimately You have made our hearts Your abode. In this time of the pandemic, we have found this to be even more so. Deprived of congregating together as one community of believers we are still connected to one another even though we are confined to our homes. 

We have come to understand how painfully we miss the fellowship we once took for granted and the necessity for doing so. We are Your living, breathing body, and we strengthen one another each making up what the other lacks for when one is weak the other is strong. You are the Head that governs all. We trust in You. We place all our hope in You and we look forward to that day when we will once more rejoice as we fill the house of God with our physical presence and there offer to God, our Father, the Eternal Sacrifice, the life-giving Sacrifice, of His only, most beloved, Son.

LUKE 16:1-8

My Beloved, Soul of my soul,

What a sad indictment You make of us today when You conclude today's Gospel passage saying, 'the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.’

The world is crooked, devious, wily, dishonest and the worldly know how to get along in such a world. Whereas we lack astuteness, and our inability to deal with duplicity and shrewd cunning often put us at a grave disadvantage. This is why You have asked us to be 'wise as serpents yet innocent as doves' for deception is all around us and we are easy targets for the fowler's snare. 

The parable of the evil but shrewd steward sheds a powerful light on how ill-prepared we are to wage battle against the evil forces that are arrayed against us. We ought never to compromise with evil but we must know how to wage war against it using their own weapons against them. Satan came against You and tempted You quoting Scripture, You defeated Him quoting Scripture as well. If we are ignorant we will be defeated every time. 

Let us put on Your armor Beloved, and ready ourselves for battle.