Shall we take the Lord’s mercy and love for granted? Nay! We must be penitent and desire to not only turn our hearts back to Him but to consecrate ourselves unto Him. For it is through Him alone that we can become holy as He is Holy.
We must always remember His great love and mercy for us, and offer up our bodies as a living sacrifice of love for Him and for the least of our brethren. For He / She who is forgiven much, loves much! We will not see or point out the faults of our neighbour, but look upon them with merciful eyes of Jesus and love them as He does.
Lord I am humbled by Your love, let me love my brethren with Your endearing love. Amen
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First reading
Hosea 5:15-6:6 ·
What I want is love, not sacrifice and holocausts
The Lord says this:
They will search for me in their misery.
‘Come, let us return to the Lord.
He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us;
he has struck us down, but he will bandage our wounds;
after a day or two he will bring us back to life,
on the third day he will raise us
and we shall live in his presence.
Let us set ourselves to know the Lord;
that he will come is as certain as the dawn
his judgement will rise like the light,
he will come to us as showers come,
like spring rains watering the earth.’
What am I to do with you, Ephraim?
What am I to do with you, Judah?
This love of yours is like a morning cloud,
like the dew that quickly disappears.
This is why I have torn them to pieces by the prophets,
why I slaughtered them with the words from my mouth,
since what I want is love, not sacrifice;
knowledge of God, not holocausts.
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Gospel
Luke 18:9-14
The tax collector, not the Pharisee, went home justified.
Jesus spoke the following parable to some people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else: ‘Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and said this prayer to himself, “I thank you, God, that I am not grasping, unjust, adulterous like the rest of mankind, and particularly that I am not like this tax collector here. I fast twice a week; I pay tithes on all I get.” The tax collector stood some distance away, not daring even to raise his eyes to heaven; but he beat his breast and said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” This man, I tell you, went home again at rights with God; the other did not. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the man who humbles himself will be exalted.’
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