2ND SUNDAY IN LENT - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

From the bright cloud the Father’s voice was heard:
‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ MT 17:5

GENESIS 15:5-12,17-18

My Soul's Beloved,

God's Covenant with us is eternal. You are the Father's pledge to His unworthy children given to us as a sign of the immeasurable, infinite, eternal, and unfathomable love He has for us who are so undeserving of His love.

To Abram God said, ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can. Such will be your descendants,’ We live in cities, and can barely see a patch of sky at night, but if we saw the night sky that Abram saw, we too would gasp in awe and wonder at this breathtaking celestial marvel as he most assuredly had done. Who can count the stars but You, O Lord, You know their number, their names, and their places for You strung them in the sky. And God makes this promise to Abram that his descendants will be as innumerable as the stars. This was the first Covenant God made with man, others followed but we broke every one of them by our unfaithfulness, our turning away from God, our disobedience, our folly, our evil, stubbornness, and our sin hardened hearts, but God continued to be faithful.

Now O Lord, a final, eternal, and unsurpassable Covenant is made by God our Father. You, His beloved Son, are the New Covenant of love He makes with us and this last Covenant is a fulfillment of the first one made to our father Abraham and every subsequent covenant that followed. Indeed, O Lord, though it may seem impossible in this sinful, godless, age we are presently living in, the children of God will increase exponentially and Your prayer to the Father will finally come to pass, 'Father, that they may be one, as you and I are one.' All the birds of prey and all the powers of darkness cannot stop what God has ordained from the beginning.

Taking Abram outside, the Lord said, ‘Look up to heaven and count the stars if you can.’ ‘Such will be your descendants,’ he told him. Abram put his faith in the Lord, who counted this as making him justified.

‘I am the Lord’ he said to him ‘who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldaeans to make you heir to this land.’ ‘My Lord,’ Abram replied ‘how am I to know that I shall inherit it?’ He said to him, ‘Get me a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon.’ He brought him all these, cut them in half and put half on one side and half facing it on the other; but the birds he did not cut in half. Birds of prey came down on the carcases but Abram drove them off.

That day the Lord made a Covenant with Abram in these terms: ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the wadi of Egypt to the Great River.’

PSALM 26(27):1,7-9,13-14

The Lord is my light and my help.

The Lord is my light and my help;
whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the stronghold of my life;
before whom shall I shrink?

O Lord, hear my voice when I call;

have mercy and answer.
Of you my heart has spoken:
‘Seek his face.’

It is your face, O Lord, that I seek;

hide not your face.
Dismiss not your servant in anger;
you have been my help.

I am sure I shall see the Lord’s goodness

in the land of the living.
Hope in him, hold firm and take heart.
Hope in the Lord!

The Lord is my light and my help.

PHILIPPIANS 3:17-4:1

My Soul's Beloved,

From the beginning, when You chose the 12 it was Your intention to build the Church - and You did. You are its Cornerstone, Peter is the Rock on which it is built, and the foundations are the Apostles. The Church as St. Paul tells us, is the pillar and foundation or bulwark of truth. This is an inescapable fact, dispute or deny it though we may, and hordes who profess to be believers do, it is nevertheless true. This is the Church You founded, one, holy, catholic and apostolic, there is no other. In her alone is found the fullness of truth. In her are the life-giving Sacraments necessary for salvation.

This is why St. Paul can say with such great confidence that we are to take him, the Apostles and their disciples as our models. We must study their way of life closely and imitate them for they modelled You, O Lord. Sadly, many false teachers have twisted Sacred Scripture, they have become idolators while accusing Your followers of the very thing that they are guilty of. Lacking the fullness of Truth found in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, they lack the gift of the Spirit, preventing them from penetrating divine mysteries. Many of them are agents of Satan whose modus operandi is division, confusion, and mayhem. Many of them are bigoted, close-minded, hard hearted, stubbornly holding on to errors that they have set up as idols despite irrefutable proof that the Catholic Chuch is the only Church You founded, there is no other.

Thank You, my Lord and my God, for the confidence we have in You and the Church. She is Your Body. She receives fullness of life from You. You keep us safe in Your Sacred Heart and in the end when time shall cease, You will present her, Your Bride, before Your Father, without wrinkle or stain. Thank You, Lord, Beloved Bridegroom of our soul.

My brothers, be united in following my rule of life. Take as your models everybody who is already doing this and study them as you used to study us. I have told you often, and I repeat it today with tears, there are many who are behaving as the enemies of the cross of Christ. They are destined to be lost. They make foods into their god and they are proudest of something they ought to think shameful; the things they think important are earthly things. For us, our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the saviour we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe.
So then, my brothers and dear friends, do not give way but remain faithful in the Lord. I miss you very much, dear friends; you are my joy and my crown.

LUKE 9:28-36

My Soul's Beloved,

Peter, John, and James were given a glimpse of Your glory on Mt. Tabor. This supernatural experience was to remain with them and sustain them when You were no longer with them. At the time they witnessed it, they could scarcely make sense of what they were witnessing. They were stupefied with wonder and awe and were incapable of truly comprehending what they were privileged to see. Sadly, every memory of this moment before which they were wonderstruck would flee from their conscious minds from the moment the 12 accompanied You to Gethsemane, You singled out these same three and asked them to go out further with You and invited them to pray with You as You went through Your agony in the garden.

Here again they could scarcely make sense of what was happening. They could recall nothing You had said in the three years they spent with You as Your closest companions. All they saw was their beloved Master, their Lord, their Teacher in a way they had never seen You before. You seemed mortally afraid, undergoing great torment, You groaned and moaned and the sound of it pierced their heart as they watched helplessly. Your unbearable agony of grief that seemed to crush You overwhelmed them so greatly and was so incomprehensible to them, they slept. 

But these stupefyingly horrific events would come to pass later, for now they beheld Your glory. They saw You transfigured and for a brief moment, they glimpsed heaven. They saw You conversing with Moses and Elijah and they heard You speak with them about all that would soon endure at the hands of evil men and what it would accomplish for the whole world. Now as later, their eyes were heavy with sleep, but they fought against it and we have their testimony of what they saw. They saw You in Your glory, and they too were covered by the presence of God in the cloud and heard Him speak saying, ‘This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.’ 

What a great privilege was accorded to the three, Peter, John and James and while the memory fled during the horrific days of Your arrest, trial, and the execution of  Pilate's judgment in the most brutal and barbaric execution of the Son of Man and the Son of God, they did recall it later and preached it and it was recorded so every generation of believers can know and believe that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God who has redeemed the world.

Jesus took with him Peter and John and James and went up the mountain to pray. As he prayed, the aspect of his face was changed and his clothing became brilliant as lightning. Suddenly there were two men there talking to him; they were Moses and Elijah appearing in glory, and they were speaking of his passing which he was to accomplish in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were heavy with sleep, but they kept awake and saw his glory and the two men standing with him. As these were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is wonderful for us to be here; so let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ – He did not know what he was saying. As he spoke, a cloud came and covered them with shadow; and when they went into the cloud the disciples were afraid. And a voice came from the cloud saying, ‘This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.’ And after the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. The disciples kept silence and, at that time, told no one what they had seen.