TUESDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Now, now – it is the Lord who speaks –
come back to me with all your heart,
for I am all tenderness and compassion. JL 2:12-13

DANIEL 3:25,34-43 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

To stand in the heart of the fire is to stand in the centre of God's heart which is a blazing fire of love for us, His children. From this vantage position, we pray and we have this confidence because we are redeemed by Your Blood, that every sigh, every prayer will be heard, and God will hasten to console and answer us for we are His children by adoption. 

Ever since the first sin God, our Father, has sought to bridge the unbridgeable gap between Him and us that Adam and Eve caused by their disobedience. Beginning with Abraham and continuing with Isaac, and all the patriarchs and prophets all through salvation history, God's hand of friendship and fatherly love has always been extended to us. 

Despite our continual rejection, despite all the ways in which we broke our Covenant with Him God did not cease to woo His wayward, stubborn, willfully disobedient and recalcitrant children back to Himself. Until God did the unthinkable, the unfathomable, the incomprehensible by sending You to become the Victim for our sins, to pay the price for our redemption by bartering Your life for ours. Entering into our death in order that in exchange we receive Your life. O glorious love of God that gave us so winsome a Savior.

Despite all of this the number of believers is shrinking rapidly as the world the flesh and the devil continue to beguile ignorant souls away from the path of life. God did promise Abraham descendants as countless as the stars of heaven and as the grains of sand on the seashore and God keeps all His promises. 

He has given us a leader, a prophet, a prince, a holocaust, a sacrifice, an oblation, that offers the most powerful and most fragrant offering that obtains our pardon, mercy, reconciliation, and peace with God, our Father through You our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, His only, and most beloved Son.

The contrite soul, the humble in spirit will always find favor with God when we re-present to Him the one and only holy Sacrifice offered on Calvary.  The Blood of the Lamb that was slain for the sins of the world has thrown wide open the gates of heaven and all who believe may enter the Father's house in and through You, for You are the only gate by which we may enter the Kingdom of heaven.

PSALM 25:4-6,7a-9 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

You are the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and all who believe in You have fellowship with Him through the Holy Spirit. 

You are our hope of eternal life. God's infinite goodness, mercy, and unfailing love are extended to us through You and the power of Your Name. 

God's love is eternal and His mercy is granted lavishly to every repentant sinner. Not only does our God keep no record of our sins, innumerable and grave though they may be, if we are truly repentant, beg for forgiveness and resolve with His help to sin no more. Every man, woman, and child is loved, embraced, forgiven, and restored to friendship with God the minute we are contrite and turn our steps back to our Father's house.

MATTHEW 18:21-35 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

After all the time that Peter had been with You, heard You preach and teach both in public and privately with the 12, as well as being a witness to all the marvelous miracles You performed, he comes up to You and puts this question to You - 

‘Lord, how often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?’

He genuinely believed that You would agree that this was really generous especially since the Law of Moses taught the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  He and the rest would have looked at You with round-eyed wonder when You said, ‘Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times.'

You then went on to tell a parable that reveals the height, the depths, the breadth, and the length of the Father's infinite mercy as well as His uncompromising justice to the wicked. 

We have to pay the price of our iniquity - genuine love demands justice. Yes, we are saved, we are forgiven, the price of our iniquity is paid but we are called to walk in the way of love unwaveringly as we make our pilgrim journey from this life to the next. The love, the mercy, the forgiveness that has been extended to us must also be extended uncompromisingly to all who sin against us and ask for pardon.

If not, God's justice demands that we be punished until we have paid in full the debt we owe. However, the debt is so great we can never repay it hence the only way is to forgive our debtors just as we have been forgiven. 

“You wicked servant, I cancelled all that debt of yours when you appealed to me. Were you not bound, then, to have pity on your fellow servant just as I had pity on you?” And in his anger the master handed him over to the torturers till he should pay all his debt. And that is how my heavenly Father will deal with you unless you each forgive your brother from your heart.’