Friday, July 4, 2025

FRIDAY OF WEEK 13 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened
and I will give you rest, says the Lord. MT 11:28


GENESIS 23:1-4,19,24:1-8,62-67

My Soul's Beloved,

The Father's love for us is good, kind, and tender. He knows all and He desires us, His little ones, sinful, frail, and weak, though we are the best possible life, withholding nothing from us and thinking far ahead and planning a happy future for us. All God's plans for us are for our well-being, to prosper us in every way. This happiness that God our Father desires to give us is ours if we are always attentive to His will for us. United with the Spirit and aware of every movement of grace in us, we must do all that God desires of us. We must keep the commandments. We know what is right, true, good, and beautiful, and we must always choose it before our sinful desires. 

Just as Abraham looked forward to preparing a good future for his son Isaac and entrusted his faithful servant to carry out his wishes, so too does God care for us. He appoints a special angel to watch over us all our days. We make mistakes. We are impatient. We make choices using human wisdom, human desires, we pay greater attention to our fickle feelings, and make monumental decisions based on this house of straw. Abraham sent his servant back to his own country in order to find a wife from among his own people for his son. We marry people of other faiths, and we invite a lifetime of misery for ourselves and for the children born from this interfaith union. There is no wisdom in it, and more often than not, we jeopardise our salvation and the salvation of those who are born from such a union.

The wisdom of God is available to all who seek it in prayer, meditation, contemplation, His Word, and the wisdom of the Church. Sadly, we are too caught up in our own human wisdom and make ungodly decisions, bringing upon ourselves misery and heartbreak by our own folly.

By now Abraham was an old man well on in years, and the Lord had blessed him in every way. Abraham said to the eldest servant of his household, the steward of all his property, ‘Place your hand under my thigh, I would have you swear by the Lord, God of heaven and God of earth, that you will not choose a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I live. Instead, go to my own land and my own kinsfolk to choose a wife for my son Isaac.’ The servant asked him, ‘What if the woman does not want to come with me to this country? Must I take your son back to the country from which you came?’ Abraham answered, ‘On no account take my son back there. The Lord, God of heaven and God of earth, took me from my father’s home, and from the land of my kinsfolk, and he swore to me that he would give this country to my descendants. He will now send his angel ahead of you, so that you may choose a wife for my son there. And if the woman does not want to come with you, you will be free from this oath of mine. Only do not take my son back there.’
Isaac, who lived in the Negeb, had meanwhile come into the wilderness of the well of Lahai Roi. Now Isaac went walking in the fields as evening fell, and looking up saw camels approaching. And Rebekah looked up and saw Isaac. She jumped down from her camel, and asked the servant, ‘Who is that man walking through the fields to meet us?’ The servant replied, ‘That is my master’; then she took her veil and hid her face. The servant told Isaac the whole story, and Isaac led Rebekah into his tent and made her his wife; and he loved her. And so Isaac was consoled for the loss of his mother.


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 9:9-13

My Soul's Beloved,

You are aware of Matthew and had a great future planned for him, not just in this life but a crown of eternal glory in the next. Yet the world would judge him, as the Pharisees did, as the least likely candidate for this great grace and blessing. He was a public sinner, and no one was more aware of the stigma, shame, and notoriety attached to him, a Jew, for working for Rome and against his own people. Tax collectors were looked on with disdain and disgust. Despised by their own, it is no wonder that Matthew, on that wonderful day marked by God for his salvation, having heard about You, for Your fame had spread everywhere and often preceded You, he did exactly as You commanded. 

He would have often wished his life were different. No one, but God, knew his true circumstances and why he chose the profession that he did, to his own shame and degradation. But God did know, and God had wondrous compassion. You knew what it would mean to him personally to hear the words of invitation and welcome, perhaps for the first time in his miserable, misbegotten life, and to him the only true response to those glorious words, was to do just get up, leave all his sins and miserable past life behind, and follow You.

Today, the Church honors Matthew as a great saint, an evangelist, and a martyr. Never in his wildest dreams would he have known the wonderful plans God had for his life, and we should never doubt, Beloved, that great things are possible for us to whom, like Matthew, on hearing Your call to follow You, do just what he did. 

Thank You, Beloved, for assuring us that You came precisely for sinners, that You seek the sinner out, that You go after the foolish sheep that strayed from the fold, leaving the 99 in the open, and deliberately and purposefully seek the lost one, and finding it, You lead it safely home.

As Jesus was walking on, he saw a man named Matthew sitting by the customs house, and he said to him, ‘Follow me.’ And he got up and followed him.
While he was at dinner in the house it happened that a number of tax collectors and sinners came to sit at the table with Jesus and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When he heard this he replied, ‘It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: What I want is mercy, not sacrifice. And indeed I did not come to call the virtuous, but sinners.’

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