SATURDAY OF WEEK 10 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Bend my heart to your will, O Lord,
and teach me your law. PS 118:36, 29

2 CORINTHIANS 5:14-21

My Soul's Beloved,

So many of us are so unaware of what God has done for us through You. We go through life clueless of the power that is ours if we only tap into the Holy Spirit who is poured into our hearts at our baptism. We are such sad Catholics going through the motions of life without the slightest interest or awareness of the wonder of God's love for us and how His plan of salvation long before He laid the foundations of the earth had you and me in His mind and heart for we were conceived in God from all eternity.

My Soul's Beloved, I have lived decades of my life in partial blindness. I have had the great treasures of the faith within my grasp. But I chose to spend most of my years preoccupied with fruitless, frivolous pastimes and entertainments, choosing ease and pleasure before sacrifice. Suffering made me despondent. I was unwilling to take up my daily cross cheerfully and follow you. I shirked my responsibilities when I could do so, and now, finally, I begin to understand how I have wasted my life instead of making it something beautiful for You. 

But I also know this, my Lord, that You have been exceedingly patient with me all the while drawing me slowly but surely ever closer to Yourself. You have brought me to this time in my life where I am finally beginning to understand the wonder of being loved by You. Gently, tenderly, with great compassion, pity, and understanding for my many lapses, I now desire to belong to You wholly, unconditionally, and unreservedly. Thank You, for not giving up on me, for not losing patience with me, Lord, but staying with me, encouraging me, and providing all the grace I needed. 

From now onwards, therefore, we do not judge anyone by the standards of the flesh. Even if we did once know Christ in the flesh, that is not how we know him now. And for anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. It was God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the work of handing on this reconciliation. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled. So we are ambassadors for Christ; it is as though God were appealing through us, and the appeal that we make in Christ’s name is: be reconciled to God. For our sake God made the sinless one into sin, so that in him we might become the goodness of God.

PSALM 102(103):1-4,9-12

The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy.

My soul, give thanks to the Lord
all my being, bless his holy name.
My soul, give thanks to the Lord
and never forget all his blessings.

It is he who forgives all your guilt,
who heals every one of your ills,
who redeems your life from the grave,
who crowns you with love and compassion.

His wrath will come to an end;

he will not be angry for ever.
He does not treat us according to our sins
nor repay us according to our faults.

For as the heavens are high above the earth

so strong is his love for those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west
so far does he remove our sins.

The Lord is compassion and love, slow to anger and rich in mercy.

MATTHEW 5:33-37

My Soul's Beloved,

You are the embodiment of Truth. Your Name is Truth. You are Truth, and in You, there is no darkness. And because You are the very personification of Truth, Lord, we can trust You completely. Were it not so, we would be miserable creatures indeed, for when we approached You, we would be uncertain whether or not we could trust You. But because You are Truth, Lord, we know that we can. 

In our world, ignorance is bliss. We see this in all its ugliness in the attacks amounting to blasphemies by Christians against Catholic beliefs. Their profound lack of desire to seek the Truth, because it goes against their pet beliefs of what they think the Church believes and teaches, and their insurmountable pride and hauteur as they condemn the Church and Catholics willy-nilly, is comical. Many Catholics challenge them, but often it is quite clear that they are not seeking to understand but desire only to attack the Church; however, some are genuinely taken aback and begin to be challenged to study Church history with an open mind.

Thank You, Lord, that the Church remains firm and unshakeable on divine truths and revealed doctrine that has developed over the centuries. Everyone desirous of knowing the Truth can be confident that they will find it here. The Church does not change Sacred Tradition or Scripture according the latest fad or fashion of the culture. Truth remains Truth regardless of who is asking the questions.

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘You have learnt how it was said to our ancestors: You must not break your oath, but must fulfil your oaths to the Lord. But I say this to you: do not swear at all, either by heaven, since that is God’s throne; or by the earth, since that is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, since that is the city of the great king. Do not swear by your own head either, since you cannot turn a single hair white or black. All you need say is “Yes” if you mean yes, “No” if you mean no; anything more than this comes from the evil one.’