THURSDAY OF THE THIRD WEEK OF LENT - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Now, now – it is the Lord who speaks –
come back to me with all your heart,
for I am all tenderness and compassion. JOEL 2:12-13

JEREMIAH 7:23-28 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Since the Fall O Lord, we are a broken people, we sin without compunction, and we give into concupiscence without even offering token resistance. We are sinners who exult in wallowing in the miry muck and stench of the base desires of our flesh, as we follow the siren call of the world shackled to our evil inclinations by the wiles of the Enemy. 

Salvation history shows us with terrible clarity what happens not just to people but to nations who refuse to answer the call to repentance and whose hardened hearts prefer spiritual death rather than obeying Your voice. Beloved, the consequence of sin is death and the world is in moral and spiritual decay. How much longer O Lord will You stay Your righteous Hand of Justice before You sweep us away in Your wrath?

O Lord God, if You show mercy and compassion it is for the sake of the faithful remnant who cry out to You night and day hidden in monasteries and in cloistered convents, souls who are espoused to You and who plead with You to take pity on a faithless world. Shake the world O Lord and let there me signs in the sky warning us out of our lethargy that we might repent and come back to You with all our hearts before it is too late.

Have mercy on us O Lord. Have mercy on us. For the sake of Your sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.

PSALM 94(95):1-2,6-9 ©

Come, ring out our joy to the Lord;

hail the rock who saves us.
Let us come before him, giving thanks,
with songs let us hail the Lord.

Come in; let us bow and bend low;

let us kneel before the God who made us:
for he is our God and we
the people who belong to his pasture,
the flock that is led by his hand.

O that today you would listen to his voice!

‘Harden not your hearts as at Meribah,
as on that day at Massah in the desert
when your fathers put me to the test;
when they tried me, though they saw my work.’

O that today you would listen to his voice! ‘Harden not your hearts.’

LUKE 11:14-23 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

We are living at a time when all the forces of evil have been unleashed like a voracious, all-consuming fire on the world. It is slowly and steadily reducing to ashes all that is good, true, noble, and beautiful and leaving in its wake the stench of decay and death. It is all very well to lay the blame on dark powers that are controlling the world and while this may or may not be true we will be foolish to deny that it is our careless and wanton squandering of grace on unholy and self-indulgent lifestyles that has brought the civilized world to its knees.

You were accused by the evil elite of the time of doing good while being evil - this is ridiculous as You point out to Your naysayers who accused You of casting devils through the power of Beelzebul, the prince of devils. Today too the most nonsensical arguments are used to accuse those who are called by Your Name and who are faithful to Your call and the mission You have entrusted to Your Church.

This is the unvarnished truth - it is the consequence of sin, grave sin, that has prompted evil leaders to open the gates of their nations to those who worship Baal, Moloch, Asherah and a host of others. Nothing has changed. Many of these aliens, like those in salvation history, have entered with an evil agenda and the fruit of misguided compassion and generosity has opened the gates of hell, and unleashed the powers of darkness in every area of the globe. The Enemy's minions are those whose people are within the nation where division and disunity are actively promoted and his minions are entering either by invitation or by force. The world's stage is now set for a huge conflagration of its own making.

Those filled with vice currently use deadly force to carry out the plans of the enemy and seem invincible and victorious but evil can never overpower good. The Church is the stronger man and in the end, it will triumph with the victory and triumph that You have won for her and for the world on the Cross. We know the end of the story, Lord, and it is freedom from sin and death and the ultimate reign of Your Kingdom of peace and joy on the earth forever. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! Maranatha!

‘Every kingdom divided against itself is heading for ruin, and a household divided against itself collapses. So too with Satan: if he is divided against himself, how can his kingdom stand? 

So long as a strong man fully armed guards his own palace, his goods are undisturbed; but when someone stronger than he is attacks and defeats him, the stronger man takes away all the weapons he relied on and shares out his spoil.
‘He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters.’