WEDENSDAY OF THE TWENTY-FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

The kingdom of God is close at hand:
repent and believe the Good News. MK 1:15

EZRA 9:5-9 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

In the current age in which we live we make the prayer of Ezra our own. We come before You in our nothingness, we fall on our faces before You and we acknowledge that we have sinned grievously against You and against each other. We deserve all the sufferings we are enduring right now. Sin has so darkened our lives they have blotted out Your Presence in us. Our despair increases as our iniquities increase. 

All of us from the greatest to the least are guilty. We are wretched and powerless to rid ourselves of the weight of sins of our collective concupiscence, our world is blanketed in black despair because we refuse to acknowledge our guilt, confess our sins, and beg for mercy and pardon. 

But there is always hope, as even Ezra discovered in his days because there is always a remnant that remains faithful. They can be found everywhere and they are the ones who keep us ever before Your Face by their pleadings, their tears, their sighs, and their sufferings. Because of the faithfulness of a few many will be saved for they will move Your heart with their pleadings and with sighs too deep for words You will have mercy and deliver us from our willful slavery to the flesh, the world, and the devil.

Open our eyes O Lord, deliver us, and help us who believe to labor ceaselessly to build Your Kingdom on earth.

TOBIT 13:2,4,6-8 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

If we are punished it is because we have willfully broken the law. If we are destroyed it is because we have courted and flirted with evil in every despicable way. If we are consigned to eternal hellfire then it is because we have done everything in our power to be consigned to it. 

But You are a God of great mercy and compassion. Your punishment of sinners will not last forever. You will hear the prayers of Your faithful who plead for forgiveness for their own sins and the sins of the world. You are a God who saves and takes no delight in the destruction of sinners. 

You came into the world to seek and save the lost and You will leave the 99 behind in order to find the one that has wandered away from the fold.

While no one can escape Your judgment O Lord, we can also plead for and receive Your mercy. You came to save not to condemn.

Sinners, come back to him,

do what is right before him.
Who knows but he will receive you with pity?

Have pity on us, Beloved, and restore to us the joy of living that we have lost because we have sinned and we will praise You all the days that are allotted to us in this life and eternally in the life to come.

LUKE 9:1-6 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The cure to all the ills in the world is right here in our midst. In the first verse of today's Gospel text, we are told that You called the Twelve together and gave them power and authority over all devils and to cure diseases, You who called them and appointed them sent them out into the world to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.

Holy Mother Church is rooted and grounded in You, she possesses the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and the power of God and the glory of God are found in her. All that the world is required to do is to stream into her bosom, be embraced by her, and find in her the peace that You came to give the world. 

The Church on her part needs to rely on You completely in order to effectively release the power and the glory of the Holy Spirit. Your instructions are clear. Those in the highest echelons of power and authority in the Church are reminded of Your instructions: ‘Take nothing for the journey: neither staff, nor haversack, nor bread, nor money; and let none of you take a spare tunic.'  

Material possessions weigh us down, make us anxious, inveigle us into desiring more of the world and less of You. We, and more especially Your anointed, need to be stripped of everything that hinders us from living the Beatitudes. Only when we imitate You will we be able to proclaim the Good News accompanied with miracles and healings as You did so many can come to know You, believe in You and be saved.