27TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME - 2024

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

As long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us. 1JN 4:12

GENESIS 2:18-24

My Soul's Beloved,

You created us for one another - we are not meant to live selfish, solitary lives but we are to live together in love and harmony. You brought all the animals to Adam so he could name them and by doing so he had authority over them. But among none of these was found a suitable companion for him. Your Word reveals that God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep and while he slept He took one of his ribs, enclosed it in flesh, and created a woman.

While Adam slept God took a rib and from it He created a woman equal, not the same, but equal to him. Together Adam and Eve complimented and completed, each other. God brought Eve to Adam, she was His gift to him and when he beheld her he exclaimed with joy and recognition: 

‘This at last is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called woman,
for this was taken from man.’
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.

Loving Jesus, the Head and Bridegroom of Your Church, Your Bride, this is the relationship we have with You as ordained by God since the foundations of the world. Marriage between one man and one woman for life is a reflection and a forecast of the highest most perfect union that will exist between You, the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and the Church. 

At the end of time, You will come in glory, honor, power, triumph, to claim Your Bride and You will present her to Your Father and ours without wrinkle or stain and the wedding feast will commence. The Wedding Banquet O Lord will never end. But until then Lord, stay with us, help Your Church to fight the Enemy from within and without, and keep her safe from the snares of the devil. 

PSALM 127(128)

May the Lord bless us all the days of our life.

O blessed are those who fear the Lord
and walk in his ways!
By the labour of your hands you shall eat.
You will be happy and prosper.

Your wife like a fruitful vine

in the heart of your house;
your children like shoots of the olive,
around your table.

Indeed thus shall be blessed

the man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion
in a happy Jerusalem
all the days of your life!
May you see your children’s children.

On Israel, peace!

May the Lord bless us all the days of our life.

HEBREWS 2:9-11

My Soul's Beloved,

How good is our Father in Heaven who did not destroy Adam and Eve when they sinned as they rightfully deserved but rather chose to give them and their progeny a second chance. Only the God of Love could conceive such an inconceivable plan. Instead of turning away from us in disgust and anger, He sent You, His only Son to take on our sinful, human condition so You could suffer and atone for their grave sin of pride. They sinned because they wanted to become like God while You, not grasping equality with God, emptied Yourself to become like us in every way except sin and thus save us and make us like You. It was always God's plan to make us sharers in His divine life but according to His way, His will, and His plan. 

What perfect love the Father has for us that He desired to make us His children by Your submission in humility and obedience to Your agony, passion, the cruel and barbaric crucifixion resulting in death.  Adam sinned and brought death into the world, You, the New Adam, received that death, and in exchange You gave us Your life, divine life that makes us children of God and Your sisters and brothers. 

We hate suffering and will go to any lengths to avoid it but if we desire to become like You, there is no easier or better way than to submit humbly to the cross assigned to us. You ask us to pick up our cross daily and follow You rather than fight against it for there is only to the Kingdom, the way of the cross and the way of suffering. The cross alone has the power to correct, perfect, and align our will to the will of God.

As it was his purpose to bring a great many of his sons into glory, it was appropriate that God, for whom everything exists and through whom everything exists, should make perfect, through suffering, the leader who would take them to their salvation. For the one who sanctifies, and the ones who are sanctified, are of the same stock; that is why he openly calls them brothers.

MARK 10:2-16

My Soul's Beloved,

Two clear and imperative teachings issued forth from the mouth of the Eternal Word of God. It says what it means and means what it says. Many false teachers and guides have tried to spin these teachings to conform to the world, the flesh, at the instigation of the devil and have succeeded in doing so. Because it appeals to the concupiscence it is easy to gain members who readily embrace these false interpretations or watered down teachings rather than take You at Your word.  The Church, Your Bride, however, has held on to them steadfastly from the beginning for she has no authority to change what You have taught on matters of faith and morals.

The two clear teachings are on the Holy Eucharist and Holy Matrimony. Without the supernatural graces we receive in the Holy Eucharist we cannot obey the commandments. Many of Your disciples left You after they heard You speak about eating Your flesh and drinking Your blood because they found the saying too hard and they do so to this day. Many Christians have rejected Your teaching on marriage and divorce on the most frivolous grounds are rampant. The sanctity of marriage does not permit adultery in any form, shape, or form. Once married a man and woman are united and made one flesh for life.

‘But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide.’ Back in the house the disciples questioned him again about this, and he said to them, ‘The man who divorces his wife and marries another is guilty of adultery against her. And if a woman divorces her husband and marries another she is guilty of adultery too.’

It is not surprising that the evangelist Mark speaks next of Your love for children. Having children is not a right but a gift from God. Some married couples for reasons known to God alone, are not given the gift of biological children but that does not mean that they cannot be loving parents to the many children who are desperately in need of a loving home. Grave sins against children abound in our culture because the world treats children as commodities. One of the greatest evils practiced in the world today is the evil of contraception which has opened the door to all kinds of evil practices. Many are victims because of the great evil of using sex as recreation. Only in the context of marriage is cohabitation and procreation permitted by God. God honors us in making us co-creators with him in conceiving and giving life to children and the world dishonors and abuses it.

All the terrible punishments periodically visited on the earth in different ways through wars, famines, droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, plagues, pandemics, epidemics, fire, and the greed of power-hungry men and women are the fallout of our disconnect with God and His laws. Unless we change course and return to Him with contrition and true repentance we must prepared for worse chastisements. 

For the sake of the faithful and few remnant O Lord, have mercy on the many.

People were bringing little children to him, for him to touch them. The disciples turned them away, but when Jesus saw this he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. I tell you solemnly, anyone who does not welcome the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ Then he put his arms round them, laid his hands on them and gave them his blessing.