Stubbornness of heart, refusing to repent and come back to the Lord our God. Thinking your job is going to provide all you need for yourself and one or two loved ones who depend on you and of whom you care for. You choose what, when and why and no one not even God is going to tell you otherwise. You say I don’t care what others say, so what if they have good intentions? They should not invade into my private affairs!
Do you even listen to yourself speak? Do you not realise you have made yourself into the molten calf? You have made yourself the centre of the universe, there is no room for the Lord Your God. No faux piety or prayer will be heard for the Lord sees into your heart. Come now be sensible, without the love of God in your heart, you cannot love the ones you profess to love the way you ought to. The nature of the sinful God-free life you choose prevents you from truly loving and caring.
Jesus came so that you might have life to the full in Him. Turn your heart towards Him. He wants to take your hand and lead you into the promised land. It is time to let go of your past and look to the future with and in Him. Amen
Pray for me as I do for you…
First reading
Exodus 32:7-14 †
Moses pleads with the Lord his God to spare Israel
The Lord spoke to Moses, ‘Go down now, because your people whom you brought out of Egypt have apostatised. They have been quick to leave the way I marked out for them; they have made themselves a calf of molten metal and have worshipped it and offered it sacrifice. “Here is your God, Israel,” they have cried “who brought you up from the land of Egypt!”’ the Lord said to Moses, ‘I can see how headstrong these people are! Leave me, now, my wrath shall blaze out against them and devour them; of you, however, I will make a great nation.’
But Moses pleaded with the Lord his God. ‘Lord,’ he said ‘why should your wrath blaze out against this people of yours whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with arm outstretched and mighty hand? Why let the Egyptians say, “Ah, it was in treachery that he brought them out, to do them to death in the mountains and wipe them off the face of the earth”? Leave your burning wrath; relent and do not bring this disaster on your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, your servants to whom by your own self you swore and made this promise: I will make your offspring as many as the stars of heaven, and all this land which I promised I will give to your descendants, and it shall be their heritage for ever.’
So the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.
Gospel
John 5:31-47
You place your hopes on Moses but Moses will be your accuser
Jesus said to the Jews:
‘Were I to testify on my own behalf, my testimony would not be valid; but there is another witness who can speak on my behalf, and I know that his testimony is valid.
You sent messengers to John,
and he gave his testimony to the truth: not that I depend on human testimony; no, it is for your salvation that I speak of this.
John was a lamp alight and shining and for a time you were content to enjoy the light that he gave.
But my testimony is greater than John’s: the works my Father has given me to carry out, these same works of mine testify that the Father has sent me.
Besides, the Father who sent me bears witness to me himself. You have never heard his voice, you have never seen his shape,
and his word finds no home in you because you do not believe in the one he has sent.
‘You study the scriptures,
believing that in them you have eternal life; now these same scriptures testify to me, and yet you refuse to come to me for life!
As for human approval, this means nothing to me. Besides, I know you too well: you have no love of God in you.
I have come in the name of my Father and you refuse to accept me; if someone else comes in his own name
you will accept him.
How can you believe, since you look to one another for approval and are not concerned with the approval that comes from the one God?
Do not imagine that I am going to accuse you before the Father: you place your hopes on Moses, and Moses will be your accuser.
If you really believed him
you would believe me too,
since it was I that he was writing about; but if you refuse to believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say?’
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