THURSDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Alleluia, alleluia!

Jesus proclaimed the Good News of the kingdom

and cured all kinds of sickness among the people. Mt 4:23

HEBREWS 3:7-14

---- Mine,

Remember always to love one another, to be kind and respectful of one another, remember that you are My brothers and sisters, adopted children of My Father, and heirs with Me to the Kingdom of heaven. Treat one another with gentleness, patience, and reverence especially when you believe it is impossible to do so. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who persecute you. 

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews urges God's people, "Every day, as long as this ‘today’ lasts, keep encouraging one another so that none of you is hardened by the lure of sin, because we shall remain co-heirs with Christ only if we keep a grasp on our first confidence right to the end."

My Lord, it isn't easy in a world as divided and polarised as ours is today, to love one another as You command us to especially when those who govern sow seeds of division rather than unity, chaos instead of calm, and rule with tyranny rather than with respect for freedom.

We are people in exile and the Holy Spirit speaks to us just as He did to the Israelites in the desert. Let us pay heed to Him, let us cast out rebellion from our hearts, let us stop tempting You with our wickedness to turn Your back to us, just as so many have turned their back to You, refuse to follow You, and refuse to obey Your Word which is spirit, life, and truth.

Now is time, this is the acceptable hour to listen to Your Voice and harden not our hearts.  Deliverance is ours only if we submit to You now in humility and in love before it is too late and a reign of unstoppable terror and evil is unleashed upon the world.

PSALM 95:6-11

My Beloved, Soul of my soul,

With the pandemic that has gripped us, the world as we knew it is at an end. It was a time of excess, of debauchery, of licentiousness, of the idolatry of created things, and while we were feverishly consumed with the things of the world, of acquiring, possessing, owning, we forgot that we were created for You, that we belong to You, that we are redeemed by You, and that we will never know true joy if we do not acknowledge that without You we are nothing.

We are Your people, the sheep of Your flock, it is You who takes us by the hand and lead us to pasture. You feed us. You wash us clean. You restore and refresh us. You strengthen, comfort, encourage and lead us along paths that take us home to God. 

But we are stubborn, cold, indifferent, hardhearted, and we keep trying Your patience constantly. We know what You have done for us. We know how You have saved us. We know that the greatest Sacrifice imaginable was made when the Father sent You into the world to redeem and save a fallen world and yet we turn away from You, from the voice of reason, from the gentle urging of the Holy Spirit to accept liberation from the tyranny of sin and accept fellowship and friendship with God almighty. 

Despite the mighty miracles that the Israelites witnessed over and over again they forgot very quickly what God had done for His people, and we Beloved, are worse. We refuse to even make an attempt to comprehend the magnitude of our debt to You. The world continues to reject You and the price for our folly will be eternal separation from You if we do not come to our senses while there is yet time. 

Do not weary of us, Father, for the sake of Your beloved Son and for the sake of His sorrowful passion, we beg You to have pity on us, despite our foolishness, and have mercy on us and the whole world. 

MARK 1:40-45

My Soul's Beloved,

The hideous effects of the disease of leprosy mars and disfigures the flesh this is why it is used as a metaphor, an allegory, a symbol for sin. Just as leprosy eats into the flesh, rots the members of the body causing them to drop off eventually, so does sin eat into the soul and kills it. 

After Your baptism, Mark writes about a series of miracles that You performed one after the other. In today's Gospel passage we read of the miraculous cure of a leper. According to the Law of Moses, a leper is unclean and anyone who touches one becomes unclean as well. They are ostracised from their family, from society, and condemned to live on the outskirts in isolation.  

Mark describes how one desperate leper dares to approach You in faith, he falls on his knees before You and begs You to heal him only if You desire to do so. He comes to You with faith, humility, and hope, and crying out to You he pleads, ‘If you want to you can cure me.’  Your heart, wrung with compassion elicits an instant response from You. You do the unthinkable, You break the Law that renders anyone who touches a leper unclean by stretching out Your hand and with great tenderness and mercy You touch him saying, ‘Of course I want to! Be cured!’ The leprosy left him at once and he was cured. 

One can only imagine the joy that engulfed the man whose body is now made whole and whose flesh is restored. You warned him to tell no one but to show himself to the priest and make the offering for healing prescribed by Moses as proof of his healing. The man went away to do as You asked, except he could not be silenced. He talked freely to everyone about how he had been healed by You. 

Each time we approach You, our High Priest, in the Sacrament of Reconciliation we ought to come to You as that leper did. We reveal the ugliness of all our sins to You. You stretch out Your hand and touch us with tender compassion and mercy and cleanse us from every deformity of sin that distorts and destroys our soul and we are made whole again. We ought to leave the confessional as the leper did and talk freely to everyone how gracious You have been to us and how we have been healed by You so the whole world may know You, approach You, and be healed.