FRIDAY OF THE TWENTY-SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Now the prince of this world is to be overthrown,

says the Lord.

And when I am lifted up from the earth,

I shall draw all men to myself. JN 12:31-32

JOEL 1:13-15,2:1-2 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

We are living in a post Resurrection world and true to Your promises You will return in glory but not before our sins bring the darkness of night upon us enveloping the whole world. Too long, Beloved, we have ignored Your commandments. Too long have we lived in deliberate and blind ignorance of the God of all creation. We choose every pleasure and frivolity over knowledge of You, fear of You, love for You because we are afraid of the cost, the sacrifices we will be asked to make. 

All created things are subject to decay and death, but God and the Kingdom of God are eternal and yet we choose death over life by the choices we make. There is no fear of God even among those who are called to have clean hands and a pure heart by their vocation as Your anointed bishops, priests, and religious. 

If those who are are shepherds fail us so miserably what hope do we poor, silly sheep have? Have pity O Lord and keep Your gaze on Your faithful remnant who cry out to You night and day for mercy. Look upon their sacrifices, their prayers, their fasts, and for the sake of the few withhold Your well-deserved anger. Grant us grace and wisdom so we might repent and look forward to Your coming again in glory with great joy and hope instead of being doomed to death because we prefer to our vacuous lives. 

Sound the trumpet in Zion,

give the alarm on my holy mountain!
Let all the inhabitants of the country tremble,
for the day of the Lord is coming,
yes, it is near.

PSALM 9:2-3,6,16,8-9 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

No one can escape the Day of Judgment. If we continue to live sinful lives it will be the Day of Wrath for many and they will perish. But our God is a God of mercy and tender compassion. You are slow to anger and full of love for us because You know how weak we are. We are frail, we are ignorant, we are easily led by the Tempter and we give in without any resistance. We are attracted by the lure of the world even though its pleasures are short and empty.

Help us keep ever before our eyes the inescapable truth that life is short and no matter how many years are granted to us they will eventually come to an end. Grant us the grace to come to our senses and repent and transform our lives before we die in sin and be lost forever. 

You are a just judge and the wicked will perish forever. The psalmist spells it out clearly for us:

You have checked the nations, destroyed the wicked;
you have wiped out their name forever and ever.
The nations have fallen in the pit which they made,
their feet caught in the snare they laid.

While there is yet time, grant us wisdom and the grace to repent before it is too late. 

But the Lord sits enthroned forever.
He has set up his throne for judgment;
he will judge the world with justice,
he will judge the peoples with his truth.

LUKE 11:15-26 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

There will always be evil, envious people who will deliberately and purposefully draw erroneous conclusions on what is right good, and true in order to promote and uphold lies. Such people thrive on division and dissension for the sake of creating doubt in the minds of the ignorant and the weak. So it was when some people said that it is through Beelzebul, the prince of devils, that You cast out devils. 

This was so obviously a lie and defied logic as You pointed out to Your listeners. There is another thing that those who promote sinful agendas do, they ask for signs constantly. They do not wish to believe even though plenty of signs have already been given. For such as these, no sign is ever enough because they are deceitful and have no wish to accept any sign no matter how great. How could Satan empower You to cast out demons when it would defeat his own evil purposes to do so? 

It suits the purpose of the Enemy to encourage the world to be skeptical about devils and the power they wield over the weak and the faithless. You posed this question to Your detractors whose religious leaders themselves cast out demons, 'Now if it is through Beelzebul that I cast out devils, through whom do your own experts cast them out? Let them be your judges then. But if it is through the finger of God that I cast out devils, then know that the kingdom of God has overtaken you.'

The warning You gave to Your opponents then You give us today as well: ‘He who is not with me is against me; and he who does not gather with me scatters.

Here is another warning for us who resolve to change our sinful ways, make a clean break with the past, but do nothing to begin a new life led by the Holy Spirit. 

‘When an unclean spirit goes out of a man it wanders through waterless country looking for a place to rest, and not finding one it says, “I will go back to the home I came from.” But on arrival, finding it swept and tidied, it then goes off and brings seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and set up house there, so that the man ends up by being worse than he was before.’

MEMORIAL OF OUR LADY OF THE HOLY ROSARY - 2021

DAILY HOLY MASS READINGS

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee!
Blessed art thou among women. LK 1:28

ACTS 1:12-14 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

Where Peter and the Apostles are there is the Church and where the Church is there is Mary, the Mother of God, and our Mother, the last most precious given by You to us while You were in the last throes of Your agony on the Cross. 

Anyone who rejects Your Mother Mary is not in full communion with the Church. We are the Church, are members of Your Body. The Twelve are the foundation stones on which the Church stands on Peter, the Rock, and You, its Cornerstone. Christians can quibble until the cows come home, but the unvarnished truth is this, “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” 

After Your Ascension into heaven, the Apostles, as instructed by You, were in the upper room, with them were Mary, Your Mother, the women who followed You to the end, and Your relatives. Here we have the first glimpse of the nascent Church. Peter, the Apostles, Mary, who is the Arc of the New Covenant, and every believer who is a member of Your Body and hence are Your sisters and brothers.  

Today, as the Church celebrates our Mother as the Queen Warrior who has given us the most effective weapon, the Holy Rosary, to battle and defeat the Enemy, let us resolve to pray this prayer so dear to the heart of both Mother and Son every day for as long as we live.

LUKE 1:46-55 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

The most luminous beauty of our blessed Mother comes precisely from the fact that she who is all perfection knows full well that all that she possesses of goodness, purity, truth, and beauty is God's gift to her. She is aware of her exquisite loveliness because she is God's masterpiece preserved from every stain of sin including original sin, by the merits of Your salvific work of redemption on the Cross, by You, her Son, who is God and hence outside of time and space.

There is no more glorious, more beautiful, more enthralling a prayer than the Magnificat that burst forth from the lips of Mary at the Visitation. It is a love song inspired by her Spouse the Holy Spirit. Its words express the thoughts of one who has spent her entire life contemplating God and when her cousin Elizabeth, who in turn was inspired by the Holy Spirit to recognize that she was in the presence of the Mother of our Lord, the floodgates of loving praise burst forth from the heart of one who possessed God and was possessed by God.

Mary's endearing and profound humility comes from her awareness that she was chosen by God and was sinless because of the singular grace she received from God. It would do us well, proud sinful creatures that we are, to be aware that but for the grace of God we are deserving of hell. 

Blessed is the Virgin Mary, who bore the Son of the eternal Father.

LUKE 1:26-38 ©

My Soul's Beloved,

God's plan of salvation since the dawn of creation will finally come to pass when Mary says yes. But the question had to be asked, and her answer had to be given before the salvific work of His Son could commence. God who created this magnificent, peerless creature, along with the heavenly hosts waited with bated breath for this young virgin to give her consent. Her free will was His gift to her and at no point would He coerce her - she could freely say yes or no. Her gift to the God she loved was a joyous, wholehearted yes.

All the glory and reverence we give Mary rebounds to God. You were the Son of God and the Son of Mary, hence she is Mother of God. She was conceived without original sin because she is the Ark of the New Covenant. Only the Levites could touch the Ark of the Covenant, Uzzah touched it and died. How much holier is Mary, who conceived the Son of God by the Holy Spirit. She is full of grace, she is the most highly favored of all human beings and God has raised her higher than the angels. 

The Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are constantly outdoing each other to heap grace upon grace on her who is God's greatest masterpiece in all creation.