TWELFTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 2023

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

The Spirit of truth will be my witness;
and you too will be my witnesses. JN 15:26, 27

JEREMIAH 20:10-13 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Jeremiah was hounded by his enemies, those in power who hated him because he pointed out their sins. They preferred not to have their conscience troubled and saw him as a constant reminder that their wicked lives were an affront to God and to His Laws.

This was even more true of You - the people of Israel and especially those in authority hated You and from the beginning of Your public ministry plotted to destroy You. Jeremiah's life was a foreshadowing of what Yours too would be. You had to flee even as an infant in the arms of Your Mother Mary and St. Joseph when Herod sought to kill You. The evil in him was so great that he thought nothing of slaughtering innocent babies in the hope that You too would be in that number and would be destroyed posing no threat to his illegitimate rule as king.

How did God avenge our sins beginning with the sin of our first parents? He sent His only Son into the world, You became like us in all things save sin, and You took upon Yourself our wickedness, our evil, the horror of all our sins, and the dreadful consequences of those sins upon Yourself and You paid the price that we could never pay. This was Your vengeance against the Enemy - this is how God, our Father, dealt with our infamy, our wickedness, and our rejection of His love, and before such love, my Soul's Beloved, we stand in awe, in shame, and whole-hearted gratitude for having disarmed us with His loving kindness.

But you, O Lord of Hosts, you who probe with justice,
who scrutinise the loins and heart,
let me see the vengeance you will take on them,
for I have committed my cause to you.
Sing to the Lord,
praise the Lord,
for he has delivered the soul of the needy
from the hands of evil men.

PSALM 68(69):8-10,14,17,33-35 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

This is the prayer of Your Bride, the Church, that someday soon, the whole world will stand in awe and gratitude for the work of salvation that You wrought for us on the Hill of Calvary. The Cross is the answer to our unquenchable thirst for love. Drinking deep from the Cup of Salvation, Beloved, we are saved, we are redeemed, we are made whole, we are made one with God.

It is for you that I suffer taunts,

that shame covers my face,
that I have become a stranger to my brothers,
an alien to my own mother’s sons.
I burn with zeal for your house
and taunts against you fall on me.

In your great love, answer me, O Lord.

We are living in an age where the Church is being persecuted and we ask for the grace and strength to rejoice and be glad for the day of Your second coming in glory is drawing near. 

The poor when they see it will be glad

and God-seeking hearts will revive;
for the Lord listens to the needy
and does not spurn his servants in their chains.

You alone O Lord can help us to overcome the violence and the virulent hatred of those who have set their face against us and seek to annihilate us from the face of the earth. May the blood of Your faithful servants O Lord be the seed of new Christians to foil the work of the Enemy. 

ROMANS 5:12-15 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

We were not guilty of original sin but our parents were and we inherited their tainted nature and hence were doomed to die an eternal death. One man through his disobedience shut the gates of paradise forever for the rest of us and no child of Adam could hope to open it again. 

God had to intervene. God who so loved the world that He would not permit His poor creatures to perish so He sent You, His only Son into the world to become the means by which we are saved. You who reposed in the bosom of the Father, His only Word, His Eternal Word, left the loving embrace of God to come into the world as one like us, clothed in human flesh, taking upon Yourself our weakness, becoming little, becoming for a little while less than the angels in order that You, the Sinless One, could become sin. Taking upon Yourself our iniquity, our shame, our guilt, our loss, paying the price that was death, plunging into it and redeeming the whole human race by raising us to new life in You through Your glorious, triumphant, victorious resurrection. THANK YOU, LORD! THANK YOU1

Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift itself considerably outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man’s fall so many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift.

MATTHEW 10:26-33 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Never in the course of history has there been such a total rejection of Christianity and its doctrinal teachings which we received from You. While this almost total rejection was once confined to the chosen people of God, for as yet the Gospel had not reached the ends of the earth, today the whole world has heard the Good News of our salvation preached and taught, the faith accepted and lived by many.  Yet many nations that once were fervently and staunchly Catholic and Christian have either not passed on their faith or have passed down a weak and watered-down version of it. 

Never has the warning You gave Your Apostles to be alert and watchful been more pertinent than it is in our time. ‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell.’ You also console us saying to us now and always: ‘Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.’

Grant us this grace Lord always to be unafraid to stand for You and against the wiles of the Enemy, the evil culture we live in, and above all our own concupiscence.

‘So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.’