THURSDAY OF WEEK 12 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

If anyone loves me he will keep my word,
and my Father will love him,
and we shall come to him. JN 14:23

GENESIS 16:1-12,15-16

My Soul's Beloved,

Waiting patiently and with faith that You will do just what You say is not my strong suit, nor is it for many. I pray, I ask, and I expect an immediate answer to my prayers, even though I know quite well that that is not how prayers are answered. I am fully aware that You always know best how and when to answer my prayers, yet, foolishly, like Sarai, I become impatient with waiting. Sarai lacked the faith of her husband and, taking matters into her own hands, urged her husband to take her slave girl Hagar so she could conceive a child and thus assist God in fulfilling the oath He swore to him. Her lack of faith in God caused great suffering to her, Hagar, and Abram, and also had eternal negative consequences. 

A lack of faith in God - our Creator, and Father, our Savior and Redeemer, our Helper, and Sanctifier, is the root cause of the horrific state in which the world is today. Yet, Beloved, we cannot lay the blame wholly on Sarai and her foolish intervention, even though her actions did great harm and brought a great deal of future suffering on the world, we as members of Your Body could have been the leaven with which to negate them had we lived our faith as the Apostles and early disciples did. Even now, Lord, if we model our lives on You, Mother Mary, St. Joseph, the Apostles, and all the great saints and martyrs of the Church, we can still bring about, with the Help of the Holy Spirit, a new age of discipleship and stewardship of the Gift of God. May this Jubilee Year 2025 be the age when the powers of evil are vanquished and the Spirit of Love, Life, and Truth are rekindled, setting the whole world on fire with zeal for the love of God and for one another.

Abram’s wife Sarai had borne him no child, but she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, ‘Listen, now! Since the Lord has kept me from having children, go to my slave-girl. Perhaps I shall get children through her.’ Abram agreed to what Sarai had said.

And once she (Hagar) knew she had conceived, her mistress counted for nothing in her eyes. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May this insult to me come home to you! It was I who put my slave-girl into your arms but now she knows that she has conceived, I count for nothing in her eyes. Let the Lord judge between me and you.’ ‘Very well,’ Abram said to Sarai ‘your slave-girl is at your disposal. Treat her as you think fit.’ Sarai accordingly treated her so badly that she ran away from her.

The angel of the Lord met her near a spring in the wilderness, the spring that is on the road to Shur.

‘Now you have conceived, and you will bear a son,
and you shall name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard your cries of distress.
A wild-ass of a man he will be,
against every man, and every man against him,
setting himself to defy all his brothers.’
Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave to the son that Hagar bore the name Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

PSALM 105(106):1-5

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good;
for his love endures for ever.
Who can tell the Lord’s mighty deeds?
Who can recount all his praise?

They are happy who do what is right,
who at all times do what is just.
O Lord, remember me
out of the love you have for your people.

Come to me, Lord, with your help
that I may see the joy of your chosen ones
and may rejoice in the gladness of your nation
and share the glory of your people.

O give thanks to the Lord for he is good.

MATTHEW 7:21-29

My Soul's Beloved,

When we like Sarai, take matters into our own hands, interpret God's Word and promises according to our fleshly desires, and refuse to take God at His Word in humble obedience, we risk everything and lose it all because of haughty, prideful disdain of God's will. 

We have only to look at the 40,000 and ever-growing fragmentations of those who first broke away from Holy Mother Church 1500 years ago. Unholy, prideful, obstinate men unwilling to pray, fast, and suffer for the sins committed by high-ranking members of the Church and also trusting in their own human wisdom have done grave harm not to the Church but to themselves and have placed in eternal peril their immortal souls.

Thank You, Beloved, for reminding us in Your Church that when we fail to love God and our neighbor as we are commanded to do, then no matter what we do will be like the offering of Cain. When we fail in self-sacrificial love, we fail in the demands that such love makes of us. The Church built on the Rock of Peter is indestructible since we have this assurance from God Himself, the Eternal Word, that the gates of hell will never prevail against her.

The Catholic Church is the only Church that teaches with authority because she is taught by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Wisdom and Truth, who dwells in fullness in her. 

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord,” who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven. When the day comes many will say to me, “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, cast out demons in your name, work many miracles in your name?” Then I shall tell them to their faces: I have never known you; away from me, you evil men!

‘Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and hurled themselves against that house, and it did not fall: it was founded on rock. But everyone who listens to these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a stupid man who built his house on sand. Rain came down, floods rose, gales blew and struck that house, and it fell; and what a fall it had!’

Jesus had now finished what he wanted to say, and his teaching made a deep impression on the people because he taught them with authority, and not like their own scribes.