THURSDAY OF THE THIRTY-THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Harden not your hearts today,
but listen to the voice of the Lord. PS 94:8

1 MACCABEES 2:15-29 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

How few there are today, who are zealous for You and the Law of Love first for God wholeheartedly and then for neighbor. We are all too busy kowtowing to the cultural agenda of our age and have created for ourselves a world that no longer upholds Truth.

Pilate asked the question, 'What is truth?' but he did not wait for the answer. Truth stood before him and he was unable to perceive it because he was blinded by his worship of Caesar. 

Mattathias not only burned with zeal for the law of God, but he was also prepared to give up everything for it. None of the honors of the world that King Antiochus offered him tempted him. He knew what was right and was prepared to lose everything including his life to keep and honor the Law of God.

 ‘Even if every nation living in the king’s dominions obeys him, each forsaking its ancestral religion to conform to his decrees, I, my sons and my brothers will still follow the covenant of our ancestors. Heaven preserve us from forsaking the Law and its observances. As for the king’s orders, we will not follow them: we will not swerve from our own religion either to right or to left.’ 

Today, most of us a Christians only in name. Many have renounced their Christian roots to embrace the culture of the world. There are very few Mattathias' among us but we pray that these few by their sterling example and unswerving faith will shine the Light of Truth on the world and by their witness draw others to come home to You. Unless we are prepared to lay down our lives for the sake of the Gospel the world will perish.

PSALM 50:1-2,5-6,14-15 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The Creator has spoken and His Eternal Word has gone forth to the ends of the earth on the Breath of the Spirit. The work of salvation is a work of the Triune God. The Light of Truth is set high on Mt. Zion and it beckons all people of goodwill to make their pilgrim way to the House of God.

What does the Father ask of us, His people who were chosen from among all the nations in the world? He requires us to come together in faith offering to Him the Covenant Sacrifice most pleasing to Him the Sacrifice of Love offered by the Incarnate Word on Calvary.

There is no greater prayer, there is no greater Sacrifice of Thanksgiving and Praise than the celebration of Holy Mass. All God's faithful come together as one community, uniting their own personal sacrifices with the one and only Sacrifice offered by the Son to the Father in expiation of the sins of the whole world. The Father will hear and answer every cry that His children utter when they unite the sacrifice of their own lives with the one, holy, complete, and perfect Sacrifice offered on the Cross. 

LUKE 19:41-44 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The greatest tragedy of all time is the rejection by God's chosen people of the One that they themselves were waiting for, praying for, longing for, ever since the fall of Adam and Eve. Luke phrases it perfectly in today's Gospel passage when he says, 'They did not recognize  did not recognize their  opportunity when God offered it!’ They had their own narrow expectations of the Messiah and when the reality was so unbelievably breathtaking, unexpected, incomprehensible, and unfathomable, they simply rejected it. It was inconceivable to them that God would choose to come in this way - hidden, small, poor, ordinary, unknown, quietly, unobtrusively. They could not wrap their minds around it and hence they dismissed it summarily.

And here You are, drawing close to Jerusalem, where every prophecy of the Suffering Servant made by the prophet Isaiah would be fulfilled. Your heart is broken for You can foresee what their blind and stubborn rejection of You will cost them. All that they knew, loved, and revered, their way of life that was began with Abraham would be swept away forever, and You wept. It could have been averted but they refused to accept God's Way of coming into the world. 'He came to his own and his own received him not.'

 
As Jesus drew near Jerusalem and came in sight of the city he shed tears over it and said, ‘If you in your turn had only understood on this day the message of peace! But, alas, it is hidden from your eyes! Yes, a time is coming when your enemies will raise fortifications all round you, when they will encircle you and hem you in on every side; they will dash you and the children inside your walls to the ground; they will leave not one stone standing on another within you – and all because you did not recognise your opportunity when God offered it!’