FRIDAY OF THE FIRST WEEK OF LENT - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Shake off all your sins – it is the Lord who speaks –
and make yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. EZK 18:31

EZEKIEL 18:21-28 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

We become prisoners of our shame when it prevents us back from going to Confession and receiving total absolution for all the grave sins that we have committed. When we hold on to our shame we are bound in chains but when we bring that shame with humility and contrition to the confessional we are set free. Beloved, in fact, this is precisely why You instituted the Sacrament of Reconciliation. 

When we fail to renounce sin we become sick in heart, mind, soul, body, and spirit and we find it increasingly difficult to resist temptation. We become more susceptible to the temptations of the flesh, the world, and the devil and become even more afflicted in body and spirit until we find that we are incapable of renouncing the voracious demands of sin that prey on us. And yet there is such a simple remedy for sin in the Sacrament of Reconciliation but the longer we stay away from it the more difficult it becomes to find the courage as well as humility, to confess our sins to the priest and receive Your healing and forgiveness. 

You desire that all of us be saved this is why You died for us in perfect obedience to Your Father's will. Grant me this grace O Lord and grant this grace not just to me but to all my family members and the whole world that we renounce our wickedness and live. 

PSALM 129(130) ©

Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord,

Lord, hear my voice!
O let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleading.

If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt,

Lord, who would survive?
But with you is found forgiveness:
for this we revere you.

My soul is waiting for the Lord.

I count on his word.
My soul is longing for the Lord
more than watchman for daybreak.
(Let the watchman count on daybreak
and Israel on the Lord.)

Because with the Lord there is mercy

and fullness of redemption,
Israel indeed he will redeem
from all its iniquity.

If you, O Lord, should mark our guilt, Lord, who would survive?

MATTHEW 5:20-26 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

If we are self-absorbed like the scribes and Pharisees, if our virtue is only cosmetic and we display it for all to see like window-dressing but there is no substance to it then as You rightly point it we will never get into the kingdom of heaven. You have neither affection nor patience with hypocrites. 

True virtue costs something. It demands the giving up of self for the good of the other, of the renunciation of our will in exchange for You in all circumstances, in renouncing the world, the flesh, and the devil. It means denying the senses even of legitimate pleasure. To seek You ardently and be united to You no matter what it costs us for it is only in dying to ourselves that we will find eternal life.

It cost God everything to save us likewise we must be prepared to give up all for Your Sake and the sake of the Kingdom if we desire to be saved.