As much as we would like to, we don’t always live in the light all of the time. From time to time darkness overshadows us in many various forms and we find ourselves stumbling, hoping and praying for a way out.
How wonderful for us who have indeed seen the great light! Our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ is that very light and we know with certainty that He will surely come to drive all darkness away. His saving hand is upon us ever ready to heal and restore us. So that we can live fully in His light. It is our duty therefore to bring His light to those dwell in darkness. So that they might come to know Him and live in His light.
Let us offer our prayers today for the nations who are undergoing darkness today, may the light of Christ shine through bringing them comfort, healing and peace. We pray for Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong and the rest of the world who face calamity, war and unrest. Amen
First reading
1 John 3:22-4:6
The Son of God has come and given us the power to know the true God
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 dand 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
The people that lived in darkness have seen a great light
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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