SATURDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Ruler of the House of Israel,
who gave the law to Moses on Sinai,
come and save us with outstretched arm.

JEREMIAH 23:5-8 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

As long as we are in our perishable bodies we are in exile. God's people experienced exile all through salvation history but God also set them free over and over again. The worst kind of slavery is not when there is a hostile takeover of a nation and its people and subduing them, incarcerating them, and depriving them of freedom but it is when we give ourselves over to the sins of the flesh. 

It is impossible to rid ourselves of this kind of slavery, only when we realize that we can do nothing to free ourselves and reach out for divine assistance.   

The world was condemned to a life of slavery to sin and death of the soul until the God of all love and mercy, sent You into the world, not to condemn it but to redeem it.

God's awesome plan of salvation required that You, the Son of God who is the Word of God and by whose power the universe was created was to leave Your throne in heaven and descend into the world clothed in vulnerable human flesh and becoming one like us in all things save sin. You are a Sign of Contradiction to a world that preaches a gospel of the fulfillment of all our selfish desires and encourages the indulgence of all the promptings of the flesh.  There is a cold, cruel, naked, and relentless hostility to all things pertaining to the sacred and divine.

Thank God for hope:

See, the days are coming – it is the Lord who speaks –
when I will raise a virtuous Branch for David,
who will reign as true king and be wise,
practising honesty and integrity in the land.
In his days Judah will be saved
and Israel dwell in confidence.
And this is the name he will be called:
The-Lord-our-integrity.

Thank You, Beloved, for being our hope of salvation and eternal joy.

PSALM 72:1-2,12-13,18-19 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Because we have in You a Brother, a Savior, a Redeemer, a God, who became one of us and understands well our human condition in every respect we can confidently approach You certain that You can and will feel compassion and be moved to pity for us. 

For he shall save the poor when they cry

and the needy who are helpless.
He will have pity on the weak
and save the lives of the poor.

We place all our hope in You Lord for You are our joy and our peace. 

MATTHEW 1:18-24 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The moment we cast aside fear we are able to embrace God's will for our lives as Joseph did. The evangelists narrate how You came to be born and every word is pregnant with divine love and divine providence giving birth to the answer to every longing, every hope, every dream, every joy that the human heart desires - Christ, the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary.

We thank the Holy Spirit today for the inspiration granted to the Vicar of Christ to announce the Year of St. Joseph. It gave the faithful an opportunity to meditate on the virtues of Joseph who was just an ordinary man like one of us but chosen to be an integral part of fulfilling the most extraordinary plan of God. The more we contemplate Joseph the more we are struck by how once he was made aware of God's plan embraced it wholeheartedly and submitted himself totally to it. He allowed God complete freedom to inspire, direct, and guide him in fulfilling the greatest role ever entrusted to man - the protection and care of the fairest of God's creatures and the raising from infancy to manhood the Son of God. Lesser men would have found it unbearable, unthinkable, undoable but it was his humility and his profound love for his beloved, Mary, that enabled him to surrender his whole life to both Mother and the Babe. Joseph believed what to any normal human being would have been fantasy or madness. His faith in God was childlike, his awe of Mary, the handmaid of the Lord and his bride, and the ardor and purity of his love for her made it possible for him to be used mightily by God to fulfill the divine plan.

The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son
and they will call him Emmanuel,
a name which means ‘God-is-with-us.’ When Joseph woke up he did what the angel of the Lord had told him to do: he took his wife to his home.

We thank You, Lord, for giving us this year dedicated to St. Joseph, Your foster father. The more we contemplate his virtues the greater is our belief that he whom You honored, revered, loved, and obeyed on earth continues to hold and enjoy a privileged place with You, Mary, the Father, the Holy Spirit, and all the angels and saints in the Kingdom of God.