The greatest gift we can offer anyone be it family, friend, colleague, schoolmate or even the stranger, is the gift of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! For it is He alone who can give them true peace of heart and mind, true joy and love. For through Him alone we are all liberated from sin, evil and set free to live in His love.
Here is another truth and for some may be a little difficult to accept and that is we cannot allow anything or anyone to come between us and our relationship with the Lord our God. He must be placed above all and everyone in our lives. Only then can we be free to love Him with all our heart, mind and soul. Only then can we truly love one another as we ought to, the way He loved us all the way to the Cross. Only then can we live in the Spirit to set the world ablaze in His love.
Here I am Lord, I come to do Your Will! Amen
First reading
Romans 6:19-23 ·
Now you are set free from sin, and slaves to God
If I may use human terms to help your natural weakness: as once you put your bodies at the service of vice and immorality, so now you must put them at the service of righteousness for your sanctification.
When you were slaves of sin, you felt no obligation to righteousness, and what did you get from this? Nothing but experiences that now make you blush, since that sort of behaviour ends in death. Now, however, you have been set free from sin, you have been made slaves of God, and you get a reward leading to your sanctification and ending in eternal life. For the wage paid by sin is death; the present given by God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Gospel
Luke 12:49-53
How I wish it were blazing already!
Jesus said to his disciples: ‘I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!
‘Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. For from now on a household of five will be divided: three against two and two against three; the father divided against the son, son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law, daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.’
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