Are we a perfect and Holy Family in Christ? Far from it for we are all sinners. Yes even our priests and elders in the Church sin, but that is no excuse to stay away from Church thinking we can do better without it. The World does not want us to know the truth, does not want to acknowledge the Son of God. The World offers us a free and carefree live of ‘happiness’ withholding the fact that it is all fleeting.
There is only one Truth, way and life and that is in Jesus. For it is in the carrying of our cross and striving for holiness that we can achieve holiness through our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ.
He came to gather us unto Himself, to proclaim the good news of our salvation in Him. So that we may live with Him in paradise. And to help us achieve the goal He teaches to us love our Heavenly Father with our all in all, keep His commandments and love one another. He gives us the Holy sacraments and at the very pinnacle of it He gives of Himself in the Holy Eucharist. Loving, healing and transforming us each and every time we receive Him. Amen
First reading
1 John 3:22-4:6
Whatever we ask God,
we shall receive,
because we keep his commandments
and live the kind of life that he wants.
His commandments are these:
that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ
and that we love one another
as he told us to.
Whoever keeps his commandments
lives in God and God lives in him.
We know that he lives in us
by the Spirit that he has given us.
It is not every spirit, my dear people, that you can trust;
test them, to see if they come from God,
there are many false prophets, now, in the world.
You can tell the spirits that come from God by this:
every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus the Christ has come in the flesh
is from God;
but any spirit which will not say this of Jesus
is not from God,
but is the spirit of Antichrist,
whose coming you were warned about.
Well, now he is here, in the world.
Children,
you have already overcome these false prophets,
because you are from God and you have in you
one who is greater than anyone in this world;
as for them, they are of the world,
and so they speak the language of the world
and the world listens to them.
But we are children of God,
and those who know God listen to us;
those who are not of God refuse to listen to us.
This is how we can tell
the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.
Gospel
Matthew 4:12-17,23-25
Hearing that John had been arrested, Jesus went back to Galilee, and leaving Nazareth he went and settled in Capernaum, a lakeside town on the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali. In this way the prophecy of Isaiah was to be fulfilled:
‘Land of Zebulun! Land of Naphtali!
Way of the sea on the far side of Jordan,
Galilee of the nations!
The people that lived in darkness has seen a great light;
on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death
a light has dawned.’
From that moment Jesus began his preaching with the message, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.’
He went round the whole of Galilee teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom and curing all kinds of diseases and sickness among the people. His fame spread throughout Syria, and those who were suffering from diseases and painful complaints of one kind or another, the possessed, epileptics, the paralysed, were all brought to him, and he cured them. Large crowds followed him, coming from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judaea and Transjordania.
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