WEDNESDAY OF WEEK 24 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Your words are spirit, Lord, and they are life;
you have the message of eternal life. JN 6:63, 68

1 CORINTHIANS 12:31-13:13

My Soul's Beloved,

You are Love, the Father is Love and the Holy Spirit is the Love that binds You to the Father and the Father to You in Love. Love is everything without love it is impossible to please God for God is Love.

Much of what we say and do is either an act or is done for selfish reasons and motives. All the saints beginning with Mother Mary who leads the way by her great example in mirroring her Son perfectly have understood and practiced the great call and mission given to every disciple, to love as God loves. 

We were created for God which means we were created in love, by the God of Love for love. Everything we say and do must be prompted by love for God only then will our speech and actions be loving always.

Beloved, You have shown us by example what the Love of God is - it is forgetting self. It is the outpouring of self in total self-abnegation for the beloved. It is to serve in humility - promptly, gladly, and obediently regardless of whether or not we feel like it. It is only when we forget self and are totally caught up in ensuring the good of the beloved always and everywhere then, like You, who left Your glory behind and became incarnate of the Virgin Mary, lived a hidden life in poverty for 30 years, and whose public life was one of loving, humble service and obedience in faithfully fulfilling the Father's plan of not just dying to Yourself always but actually taking upon Yourself the punishment that was ours, and paying the price of our redemption by Your passion and death. A death that was preceded by every act of barbaric and incomprehensible cruelty and wicked vindictiveness that showcased the satanic murderous hatred of those who succeeded in manipulating Pilate to pronounce a judgment of death by crucifixion. 

Lord Jesus, grant me this grace, to meditate on Your life, passion, and death and with the help of the Holy Spirit, to strive to love as You have loved no matter how imperfectly I strive.  

Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it does not take offence, and is not resentful. Love takes no pleasure in other people’s sins but delights in the truth; it is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes.

In short, there are three things that last: faith, hope and love; and the greatest of these is love.

PSALM 32(33):2-5,12,22

Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

Give thanks to the Lord upon the harp,

  with a ten-stringed lute sing him songs.

O sing him a song that is new,

  play loudly, with all your skill.

For the word of the Lord is faithful

  and all his works to be trusted.

The Lord loves justice and right

  and fills the earth with his love.

They are happy, whose God is the Lord,

  the people he has chosen as his own.

May your love be upon us, O Lord,

  as we place all our hope in you.

Happy the people the Lord has chosen as his own.

LUKE 7:31-35

My Soul's Beloved,

All too often we sit in judgment on our brothers and sisters and perhaps condemn and reject them based on what we have seen or heard. Our self-righteousness makes us blind judges. More often than not we believe we are better than others. We magnify their faults, frailties, and imagined sins while ignoring or excusing our glaring shortcomings and failings.

How would You describe us, Lord? We have learned nothing despite all the painful lessons of the past, despite world wars, famines, droughts, disease, epidemics, pandemics, death, natural disasters, and man-made disasters. What will it take, Beloved, to bring us to our senses? We are so easily manipulated and distracted by the enemies of all that is good, holy, true, and beautiful that we are unable to comprehend that every day little by little we are decaying and getting closer to death.

The culture rejects all that is wholesome, healthy, and fruitful and celebrates sterility, selfishness, and self-centeredness which will inevitably collapse on itself to its ruin.

Open our eyes Lord before it is too late. You have paid the price for salvation let it not be in vain. Rather grant us wisdom so we can turn our gaze away from ourselves and fix it on You who alone has the power to save. 

‘What description can I find for the men of this generation? What are they like? They are like children shouting to one another while they sit in the market-place:

‘“We played the pipes for you,
and you wouldn’t dance;
we sang dirges,
and you wouldn’t cry.”