Today as I ponder His Word the message is not about the difficulty or challenge of being a prophet. Neither is it about Evangelisation or even the stubbornness, hard heartedness; nor about our refusal to listen to the call for repentance.
It is about our lack of faith or rather that we have made little or no progress in growing in our faith and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. On His part our loving and merciful Lord desires to do wonders in our lives. He wants to pour out His grace upon us such that we live the fullest of our lives in Him. But how can He do so? When He knocks on our door we do not open our hearts fully to receive Him? When we refuse to increase our prayer life or to dwell longer in His Word and in His presence. When we do not strive for Holiness but give in to our impatience and haughtiness in thinking we know better?
Jesus I open my heart and mind to You. Come dwell in me. Amen
St Ignatius of Loyola pray for us…
First reading
Jeremiah 26:1-9 ·Jeremiah preaches in the Temple of the Lord and is threatened with deathAt the beginning of the reign of Jehoiakim son of Josiah, king of Judah, this word was addressed to Jeremiah by the Lord, ‘The Lord says this: Stand in the court of the Temple of the Lord. To all the people of the towns of Judah who come to worship in the Temple of the Lord you must speak all the words I have commanded you to tell them; do not omit one syllable. Perhaps they will listen and each turn from his evil way: if so, I shall relent and not bring the disaster on them which I intended for their misdeeds. Say to them, “The Lord says this: If you will not listen to me by following my Law which I put before you, by paying attention to the words of my servants the prophets whom I send so persistently to you, without your ever listening to them, I will treat this Temple as I treated Shiloh, and make this city a curse for all the nations of the earth.”’ The priests and prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah say these words in the Temple of the Lord. When Jeremiah had finished saying everything that the Lord had ordered him to say to all the people, the priests and prophets seized hold of him and said, ‘You shall die! Why have you made this prophecy in the name of the Lord, “This Temple will be like Shiloh, and this city will be desolate, and uninhabited”?’ And the people were all crowding round Jeremiah in the Temple of the Lord.
Gospel
Matthew 13:54-58A prophet is only despised in his own countryComing to his home town, Jesus taught the people in their synagogue in such a way that they were astonished and said, ‘Where did the man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers? This is the carpenter’s son, surely? Is not his mother the woman called Mary, and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Jude? His sisters, too, are they not all here with us? So where did the man get it all?’ And they would not accept him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country and in his own house’, and he did not work many miracles there because of their lack of faith.
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