There is no shame in an ordered life, lived according to God’s Will. Shame and guilt came into existence as a result of sin! And sin is upon us when we objectify one another instead of respecting the dignity of our humanity, as God’s chosen Children.
God our Father deigned that man and woman called to the sacrament of Holy Matrimony are to be One and never to be divided. And in their union, they shall procreate and bear offspring. Should the couple expect or demand perfection in one another? Nay! For they are perfected only through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Even those called to single life are called to live lives worthy of the Gospel. They too shall be perfected through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Let all who come to Jesus know that they shall never be turned away. For the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. PS 103:8 Amen
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First reading
Genesis 2:18-25 ·
Man and wife become one body
The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him a helpmate.’ So from the soil the Lord God fashioned all the wild beasts and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it. The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild beasts. But no helpmate suitable for man was found for him. So the Lord God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And while he slept, he took one of his ribs and enclosed it in flesh. The Lord God built the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man. The man exclaimed:
‘This at last is bone from my bones,
and flesh from my flesh!
This is to be called woman,
for this was taken from man.’
This is why a man leaves his father and mother and joins himself to his wife, and they become one body.
Now both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame in front of each other.
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Gospel
Mark 7:24-30
The astuteness of the Syro-Phoenician woman
Jesus left Gennesaret and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, but he could not pass unrecognised. A woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit heard about him straightaway and came and fell at his feet. Now the woman was a pagan, by birth a Syrophoenician, and she begged him to cast the devil out of her daughter. And he said to her, ‘The children should be fed first, because it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs.’ But she spoke up: ‘Ah yes, sir,’ she replied ‘but the house-dogs under the table can eat the children’s scraps.’ And he said to her, ‘For saying this, you may go home happy: the devil has gone out of your daughter.’ So she went off to her home and found the child lying on the bed and the devil gone.
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