24TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

The only thing I can boast about is the cross of our Lord,
through whom the world is crucified to me, and I to the world. GAL 6:14

ISAIAH 50:5-9

My Soul's Beloved,

You gave Yourself up for me and for the world for this is what Your Father desired. This is how the Father desired to save the world. Love is the emptying of self completely for the good of the other. The Father could have bridged the gaping wound of separation caused by the disobedience of our first parents with just a command but He wanted to know the fathomless depths of His unfathomable love for us and so He gave You up into the hands of the creatures He created. Sin brought about our death. The Father sent You into the world through the incarnation of His only and eternal Word in the virginal womb of Mary. You became one like us in all things save sin. Sin brings death - You took upon Yourself the sins of the whole world and this meant also entering into the death to which we were condemned so we could receive Your life and live.

There is no way for our sinful, selfish, narrow minds to comprehend the goodness, the generosity, the wondrous inscrutable ways of God that gave us so glorious a redeemer, Savior, brother, friend, and Spouse.  Our only response is to strive to love You as You have loved us by loving and serving our neighbor.

I offered my back to those who struck me
The Lord has opened my ear.
For my part, I made no resistance,
neither did I turn away.
I offered my back to those who struck me,
my cheeks to those who tore at my beard;
I did not cover my face
against insult and spittle.
The Lord comes to my help,
so that I am untouched by the insults.
So, too, I set my face like flint;
I know I shall not be shamed.

PSALM 114(116):1-6,8-9

I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.

I love the Lord for he has heard

  the cry of my appeal;

for he turned his ear to me

  in the day when I called him.

They surrounded me, the snares of death,

  with the anguish of the tomb;

they caught me, sorrow and distress.

  I called on the Lord’s name.

O Lord, my God, deliver me!

How gracious is the Lord, and just;

  our God has compassion.

The Lord protects the simple hearts;

  I was helpless so he saved me.

He has kept my soul from death,

  my eyes from tears

  and my feet from stumbling.

I will walk in the presence of the Lord

  in the land of the living.

I will walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.

JAMES 2:14-18

My Soul's Beloved,

The fullness of the Holy Spirit abides in the Church You founded. The Apostles were handpicked by You after You spent the whole night in prayer attuned perfectly to the Father's will. Your choice of Apostles was His choice as well. The Apostles and their successors with Peter and his successors as the chief of the apostles received Your authority. When Peter speaks the matter is ended. The magisterium is the oxygen of the Holy Spirit for He functions by breathing His life, His wisdom, His power, and above all His love which is the love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Son for the Father. 

The sole reason why Christians reject the authority of Peter and the Apostles is because they, knowingly or unknowingly are of the flesh. They then become easy prey for the devil who prowls around the world seeking the eternal destruction and death of souls.

St. James' letter is a particularly annoying thorn in the side of those who pridefully have placed themselves outside the bosom of Holy Mother Church. They do so to their peril.

If good works do not go with it, faith is quite dead

This is the way to talk to people of that kind: ‘You say you have faith and I have good deeds; I will prove to you that I have faith by showing you my good deeds – now you prove to me that you have faith without any good deeds to show.’

MARK 8:27-35

My Soul's Beloved,

Unless I declare with the same heart, mind, and tongue of Peter, ‘You are the Christ’ I can have no part with You. I can preach mellifluously but if I do not embrace Peter's proclamation of who You are and the fullness of revelation that that statement entails, then I am nothing but a fraud. It is something worth contemplating by those outside the Church.

What does it mean for anyone who makes this profession of faith that You are the Christ, especially in today's world? It means that there is a real possibility that they will be crucified by those who reject You. Peter teetered on the brink of self-destruction when he tried to veer You away from Your mission and You called him out for it in no uncertain terms: 

And he began to teach them that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and to be put to death, and after three days to rise again; and he said all this quite openly. Then, taking him aside, Peter started to remonstrate with him. But, turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said to him, ‘Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’

Still, he continued to be the one You chose to lead Your Church. You prayed for him and strengthened him. He shared in Your death and also received a share in Your glory and victory as will all the faithful. 

When we say, 'Jesus is Lord' we do so by the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot say You are Lord and then reject all that You taught, preached, and handed down to us through the Apostles. When we say You are Lord, Beloved, there is also a very real possibility that we will receive a share in Your passion and death, but when we do, then we will also share in Your triumph, Your victory, and Your glorious resurrection into heaven.

He called the people and his disciples to him and said, ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’