SATURDAY OF WEEK 22 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, says the Lord;
No one can come to the Father except through me. JN 14:6

1 CORINTHIANS 4:6-15

My Soul's Beloved,

You are the Good Shepherd who having gone before us has appointed Peter and his successors to guard Your flock. The world is full of ravenous, murderous wolves who prowl tirelessly seeking to lure those among the flock who are ignorant, foolish, and weak with empty promises, away from the fold. However, You have given Peter the Chief of the Apostles, and the Eleven Your authority and power to crush the devourer who is the Father of Lies and the author of death. This power and authority is handed down so the Church is invincible against the powers of darkness. 

All that St. Paul says about how shabbily the world treats the Apostles called by You to minister to His Bride, the Church, is true. To us, who are the children of Holy Mother Church, have been given all that You have to give, we receive Your very self, for You pour Yourself, Your life, Your Spirit, and Your love into her making each of her children one with You, the Father, and the Holy Spirit. We are indeed blessed to be called children of the Most High because You are our Brother and the Bridegroom espoused to the Church. This does not guarantee that the Church is free from persecution on the contrary no person on the face of this earth is more maligned than the Pope, the Bishops, the priests, and the religious as well as those faithful leaders among the laity. The most outrageous and wicked things are said about them mostly due to ignorance and prejudice but the Church remains unflinching in her mission to hold on to the Truth and to preach it uncompromisingly whether it is palatable to the world and the culture or not. 

Because the Church is the beacon on the hill which shines its light on the world drawing all who desire to climb up to the mountain of the Lord to enter without prejudice, for all who desire her can suckle at her breasts and be strengthened in her for the Day of the Lord that will come as surely as the dawn all the power of darkness are set loose against her. But they will not prevail. You have won. The victory is Yours. And we share in Your glory and in Your victory. Alleluia!

Grant us the wisdom, the courage, and the grace to remain undaunted, unashamed, and unafraid for we are Yours. The battle belongs to You.

But instead, it seems to me, God has put us apostles at the end of his parade, with the men sentenced to death; it is true – we have been put on show in front of the whole universe, angels as well as men. Here we are, fools for the sake of Christ, while you are the learned men in Christ; we have no power, but you are influential; you are celebrities, we are nobodies. To this day, we go without food and drink and clothes; we are beaten and have no homes; we work for our living with our own hands. When we are cursed, we answer with a blessing; when we are hounded, we put up with it; we are insulted and we answer politely. We are treated as the offal of the world, still to this day, the scum of the earth.

I am saying all this not just to make you ashamed but to bring you, as my dearest children, to your senses. You might have thousands of guardians in Christ, but not more than one father and it was I who begot you in Christ Jesus by preaching the Good News.

PSALM 144(145):17-21

The Lord is close to all who call him.

The Lord is just in all his ways

  and loving in all his deeds.

He is close to all who call him,

  who call on him from their hearts.

He grants the desires of those who fear him,

  he hears their cry and he saves them.

The Lord protects all who love him;

  but the wicked he will utterly destroy.

Let me speak the praise of the Lord,

  let all mankind bless his holy name

  for ever, for ages unending.

The Lord is close to all who call him.

LUKE 6:1-5

My Soul's Beloved,

The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. How marvelously freeing is this truth, Lord. To those narrow-minded, bigoted people who are easily outraged because God will not be confined and boxed in by their squinted view of how God should act, You remind those Christians and those who are not Christians that God is far above and beyond human imagination and comprehension. Who are we to dare to say what You can and cannot do. God created all that is both seen and unseen with just One Word. Only the foolhardy, the hypocritical Pharisees, the haughty, and those puffed up with their own inflated idea of their importance will dare to question what God does, how God acts, and how God stoops low, lovingly, tenderly, compassionately, mercifully over the least of His little ones. 

Man's temerity to question what God does and how He chooses to do it is baffling. Who are we to say that God can or cannot do something? How can we dare to say either to God's face or to boldly proclaim that our human understanding is greater than His? The littler we are, the humbler we are, the more aware we are of our own nothingness the more we will experience the love of God, the power of God, and the mercy of God. God is beyond our own puny little imaginings and can do what He will. Why are we jealous if He chooses a young virgin, gives her the great grace of being immaculately conceived since she will be the New Ark of His Covenant with the world, if He chooses to fill her with every grace and virtue, and takes her body and soul into heaven at her death and coronates her as Queen of heaven and the universe? Why are you jealous when God chooses who He wills to do what He wills?

One sabbath Jesus happened to be taking a walk through the cornfields, and his disciples were picking ears of corn, rubbing them in their hands and eating them. Some of the Pharisees said, ‘Why are you doing something that is forbidden on the sabbath day?’ Jesus answered them, ‘So you have not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry – how he went into the house of God, took the loaves of offering and ate them and gave them to his followers, loaves which only the priests are allowed to eat?’ And he said to them, ‘The Son of Man is master of the sabbath.’