FRIDAY OF WEEK 26 IN ORDINARY TIME - 2025

 DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Harden not your hearts today,
but listen to the voice of the Lord. PS 94:8

BARUCH 1:15-22

My Soul's Beloved, 

Integrity is such a great virtue to possess, Lord, yet it is a virtue that many leaders in the Church and many, many more in the world lack. We are a weak, vacillating lot who are blown hither and thither by every whim. All are looking to further their own personal agendas and have lost all sense of shame. Even when their lack of morals in their personal and private lives becomes common knowledge and fodder for gossip and derision, they brazen it out with even more lies, and their position, power, and wealth enable them to get away with evil.

Beloved, created by God, He knows best how we can function at the optimum level. This is why He gave us the Ten Commandments. If we follow them in the right spirit, we can become saints. Sadly, we view them as a burden, as restricting, as cramping our style, and taking away our freedom. The Commandments create feelings of anger and resentment, and we stubbornly choose to disobey them at every turn, convincing ourselves that we know better than the Creator what is good for us.

Our world is getting darker every day. Violence, murder, and terror abound. Greater oppression, persecution, and barbarity are meted out against faithful Christians who, by their lives, silently but powerfully accuse the wicked by their love and faithfulness to You. Only You, O Lord, can touch hearts and transform lives. No one is beyond the power of Your saving help. For the sake of the remnan O Lord, show mercy once again and bring us back to the path of life, goodness, beauty, and truth.

Integrity belongs to the Lord our God; to us the look of shame we wear today, to us, the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem, to our kings and princes, our priests, our prophets, as to our ancestors, because we have sinned in the sight of the Lord, have disobeyed him, and have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God telling us to follow the commandments which the Lord had ordained for us. From the day when the Lord brought our ancestors out of the land of Egypt until today we have been disobedient to the Lord our God, we have been disloyal, refusing to listen to his voice. And so the disasters, and the curse which the Lord pronounced through his servant Moses the day he brought our fathers out of Egypt to give us a land where milk and honey flow, have seized on us, disasters we experience today. Despite all the words of those prophets whom he sent us, we have not listened to the voice of the Lord our God, but, each following the dictates of his evil heart, we have taken to serving alien gods, and doing what is displeasing to the Lord our God.

PSALM 78(79):1-5,8-9

Rescue us, O Lord, for the glory of your name.

O God, the nations have invaded your land,
they have profaned your holy temple.
They have made Jerusalem a heap of ruins.
They have handed over the bodies of your servants
as food to feed the birds of heaven
and the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.

They have poured out blood like water in Jerusalem;
no one is left to bury the dead.
We have become the taunt of our neighbours,
the mockery and scorn of those who surround us.
How long, O Lord? Will you be angry for ever;
how long will your anger burn like fire?

Do not hold the guilt of our fathers against us.
Let your compassion hasten to meet us;
we are left in the depths of distress.

O God our saviour, come to our help.
Come for the sake of the glory of your name.
O Lord our God, forgive us our sins;
rescue us for the sake of your name.

Rescue us, O Lord, for the glory of your name.

LUKE 10:13-16

My Soul's Beloved, 

Miracles are everywhere. Signs abound in all creation - in the sky, on the earth, in the oceans, under the earth, but above all in human beings. Each one of us created by God is an unrepeatable miracle of great worth. Every human life is precious from the moment of conception until our last breath. The powerful of the world, however, have systematically propagated the lie that we can arbitrarily decide who is worthy of living and who is expendable and can be destroyed without impunity. One just watches in wonder as women of all ages become almost rabid when it comes to their defence of killing the child in the womb. They are blind to the horror of abortion and euthanasia and show far greater compassion for animals.  

Sin is touted as virtue, and virtue is ridiculed. The miasma of evil, until lately, seemed to envelop the whole world, and hope grew dimmer by the day. But the Truth is, Lord, that Truth is invincible. One may try to bury it, ignore it, and try to destroy it, but Truth is eternal. Its light may be muted for a while but it cannot be wholly extinguished. Your voice rings out stronger than ever now as the faithful remnant grows increasingly powerful, and Your light in them is illumining hearts and minds hungry for hope, beauty, goodness, and truth.

Open the eyes of all, O Lord, so the world begins to see that it needs You and without You, we will destroy ourselves. For those of us who believe, O Lord, increase our numbers as we live out the Gospel fearlessly by the witness of our lives through love, kindness, mercy, and compassion. 

Jesus said to his disciples:
‘Alas for you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. And still, it will not go as hard with Tyre and Sidon at the Judgement as with you. And as for you, Capernaum, did you want to be exalted high as heaven? You shall be thrown down to hell.
‘Anyone who listens to you listens to me; anyone who rejects you rejects me, and those who reject me reject the one who sent me.’