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| LENT 2022 |
DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS
Repent, says the Lord,
for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. MT 4:17
DEUTERONOMY 30:15-20 ©
My Soul's Beloved,
The choices we make determine whether we live grace-filled joyous lives or a life enslaved to our vices and sinful habits. Nothing seems to have changed since the dawn of creation, we continue to choose the flesh, temporary delights, and perishable possessions over the things that are eternal and imperishable. We are idolators who worship the culture, humans, and the things of the world.
When we set aside the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, and the commands of God we soon find ourselves living in a world that celebrates and glorifies death. Anyone who dares to question the idealogues of the day finds themselves facing a rabid mob who will turn murderously upon them and destroy them.
Certain periods in the Christian world, as well as the lives of saints, are a living testimony and witness to revealed, divine Truth which confirms what Moses said to the people of God when he urged them to choose life over death or else they would bring ruin and disaster on themselves
‘Choose life, then, so that you and your descendants may live, in the love of the Lord your God, obeying his voice, clinging to him; for in this your life consists, and on this depends your long stay in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob he would give them.’
The state of our world is a testament that we have chosen death over life and we have brought divine wrath and just judgment upon ourselves. The leaders that govern the different countries in the world are a brood of vipers and they will rule and subjugate us for as long as we set aside God's laws.
LUKE 9:22-25 ©
My Soul's Beloved,
Today's Gospel reading gives us the perfect antidote to all the misery, evil, violence, suffering, and mayhem in the world. The world looks upon suffering as an evil to be shunned at all costs yet You came into the world to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes, and to be put to death. If redemptive suffering had no reward then we would be right to run away from it but we receive at the end of all suffering endured in the right spirit, a share in Your glorious resurrection.
Your invitation to all who wish to be Your disciples speaks clearly of the cost involved as well as the reward.
‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?’
Over two thousand years have come and gone and we have no way of knowing when You will return in glory to judge the living and the dead, but this we do know, all who are prepared to lose the world for Your Sake and for the sake of the Gospel will live in triumph with You eternally.
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