MEMORIAL OF OUR LADY OF LOURDES - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Accept and submit to the word
which has been planted in you
and can save your souls. JM 1:21

GENESIS 2:18-25 

My Soul's Beloved,

Today's passage from the Book of Genesis clearly reveals God's will concerning the union of man and woman in marriage. Man, without a fitting companion and helpmate was incomplete but he found none in all the animals in creation. So God put him into a deep sleep and from his side God fashioned a woman like himself and yet so different. When he awoke and looked at this gift God had given him, he exclaimed rapturously, 

‘This at last is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called woman,
for this was taken from man.’

How wonderfully good God is - he did not create us to be alone - just as He is a Trinity of Persons, Persons who delight in each other, so too did God desire us to share in this delight by creating for man a fit companion for him. The two are created to cleave to each other forming one single body. This is how we know that from the beginning marriage was and is meant to be for life.

When the Pharisees questioned You about the lawfulness of divorce You reminded them how God intended marriage to be when he created human beings. Christian marriage is indissoluble because once a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, they become one body.

It is amazing how Christians conveniently overlook God's Law concerning marriage. We now live in an age where God's concept of marriage is discarded and every diabolic perversion of it is celebrated. God alone knows what it will take to bring us back to our senses, perhaps the world will have to undergo many more scourges before we return to the path of wisdom and plain old-fashioned commonsense.

PSALM 128:1-5 

My Soul's Beloved, 

The psalmist lays out clearly all the blessings that God will heap on those who reverence Him with holy fear and keep His commandments. 

Their work will be blessed and they will have always have more than enough. For when God gives His hand is never too short but outstretched in a torrent of blessings, graces, and favors on those who keep the first and the greatest of all the commandments. 

Their homes will be blessed. They will be blessed in their spouses and in the fruitfulness of their marriage as regards children. Each babe conceived in the womb will be received as a gift and each will be welcomed from the moment of conception. Joy and delight will fill their homes and this will be reflected in their family life as together they raise future generations of godly men and women.

And finally, from Zion, the New Jerusalem, the place where You dwell, You will grant favor upon favor to those whom You have grafted to Yourself. They will live in Your Presence for all eternity. 

MARK 7:24-30

My Soul's Beloved,

Following the persecution of the Pharisees and Herod, You and Your disciples leave Gennesaret and Jewish territory and go into Gentile land, to Tyre. This is an opportunity to be alone with Your disciples training them for the mission that would soon be entrusted to them. In this new place, You will be unrecognized as the people here do not know You. At least that was the idea. But it was not to be. 

Word of You had reached here as well and as St. Mark describes it, a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard where You were and came to You straight away. She fell at Your feet and pleaded her case before You imploring You to take pity on her and heed her prayer. Everything she was, seemingly worked against her, she was a woman, she was a pagan, and by birth, she was a Syrophoenician, therefore, by Jewish standards, she was of no consequence. 

She was well aware of how she would be regarded but nothing would deter her from coming to You and seeking Your help in healing her little girl. Rejected and persecuted by Your own people here was a woman, a non-Jew, despised by the Jews, who heard of You, believed in You, sought You ought, fell at Your feet in humble supplication, and refused to take no for an answer.

Love gave her courage. When it seemed that You were insulting her by Your remark, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ She was not undeterred but argued gently, saying, ‘Ah yes, sir, but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.’ You had every intention of granting her petition having discerned the quality of her faith, but You wanted to hold her up as a model of how Your disciples in every age ought to approach God in prayer.  

You looked at her in admiration and said, 'For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone out of your daughter.’ Not only will she be remembered for all time for her courage, her faith, her humility, and her tenacity, but she will also be held up to all Christians as a model on how we are to approach God in prayer.