DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS
Stand erect, hold your heads high,
because your liberation is near at hand.LK 21:28
2 JOHN 4:9
My Beloved, Soul of my soul,
We experience the joy of the Holy Spirit abiding in us and in the entire community of believers only when we love one another. The greatest, foremost commandment is the very foundation of our faith and that is to love God above all and before all and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. When we do this, the Kingdom of God is already in our midst.
The world's version of love is tawdry and infantile and bears no comparison to authentic love. True love is one that is selfless. It is an act of will to love in all circumstances. It is willing to die for the good of the other.
You came to teach us how to love as the Father loves. You came to show us the Way to the Father's house. You came to give us abundant life so we will have all the strength we need to make the journey from this life to the life that is to come.
We have to obey You and keep Your word if we are to be saved for eternal life. The fullness of Truth is found only within the treasury of teaching entrusted to the Church You founded with Peter as its head. She adds nothing to it, she takes away nothing from it. When we entrust ourselves to her we entrust ourselves to You and are saved. St. John, the evangelist, could not be clearer when he said, 'If anybody does not keep within the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it, he cannot have God with him: only those who keep to what he taught can have the Father and the Son with them.'
PSALM 119:1-2, 10-11, 17-18
My Beloved, Soul of my soul,
The saints strove with all the fervor of their being to walk blamelessly before God and their lives are worth emulating. The reason why the Church raises holy men and women as saints is so we can know that it is possible for ordinary men and women to live lives of heroic virtue. True happiness is possible when we seek to do Your will in all things. It is not always easy because our flesh is weak but You provide all the graces we need to put the sinful desires of the flesh to death.
A true disciple knows that without Your help, without the help of Your Holy Spirit, without the graces channeled through the Sacraments, it would be impossible to turn away from the lure of the world and the flesh and to refuse to give in to temptations. This is why we ought to pray without ceasing. You are given a Name above every other. Your Name has power to strike terror in demons, and when we call on You, Beloved, we can be certain that You will come to our aid, and with Your help, we will overcome.
We must train ourselves to obey Your Word, unless we do, we will be unable to stand firm when we are tempted. Your Word, Beloved, is Truth consecrate us in the Truth and we will live.
LUKE 17:26-37
My Beloved, Soul of my soul,
How many warnings do we need before we wake up and realize that the time allotted to us is not given in order to live self-indulgently but to know God as our loving Father and to respond to His love as His children?
St. Luke gives us examples of Noah and his family and Lot and his family who were the faithful remnant at that time. For as long as they were in the land God did not destroy it but once Noah and his family entered the ark and when Lot and his family left Sodom, God destroyed the place completely. The whole world was destroyed after Noah and his family entered the ark and the whole of Sodom was consumed with fire once Lot and his family left that place which had become an abomination in the sight of God.
God will not be mocked. We can pretend all we want. We can tell ourselves that there are no sins and we can blame everyone but ourselves including our genes for living lives that are deeply entrenched in sin, but that will not stop the coming annihilation and our eternal destruction.
The ark is the archetype of the Church You founded and all who enter her are saved. Sin corrupts and only that which is dead is corruptible - that is what the people of Sodom discovered when it was too late. Lot and his family were the only ones who refused to give in to the prevailing culture in Sodom and they were saved. But we must beware, for once we turn away from sin we cannot look back, nor can we return to those places where we sinned. If we do, we will be destroyed just as Lot's wife was. She disobeyed. She looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. Looking back renders us unable to move forward towards life and freedom.
The paradox of life is that when we seek to hold on to it we lose it but when we expend it for others it is preserved eternally. We are called to labor for the Kingdom unceasingly and when the hour of our deliverance arrives we ought not to turn back for anything but remain faithful to the end, lest in returning to old, sinful, habits we are destroyed.
Grant O Lord, that we remain faithful, diligent, and obedient so when You return we will be counted among the living.
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