In today’s readings we see how the people are blind and deaf to the Lord our God and His prophets who are sent for love of them.
Today how many of us are deaf and blind to those He still sends us for love of us? We are blind and deaf by our prejudices, biases, our very own world view! We will not listen to their promptings, their new ideas and ways. We do not like change for we are comfortable with who we are and with things as they are. We have forgotten how the Lord made all things new in us when He transformed us from within. We were His new creation and now we have gone back to embrace the old!
Lord Jesus You who probe the loins and heart, see the good in me and remove anything that is not of You. So that I may truly glorify You by my life. Amen
Saint Vincent Ferrer, Pray for us…
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First reading
Jeremiah 11:18-20
‘Let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name may be quickly forgotten’
The Lord revealed it to me; I was warned. O Lord, that was when you opened my eyes to their scheming. I for my part was like a trustful lamb being led to the slaughter-house, not knowing the schemes they were plotting against me, ‘Let us destroy the tree in its strength, let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name may be quickly forgotten!’
But you, the Lord of Hosts, who pronounce a just sentence, who probe the loins and heart,
let me see the vengeance you will take on them,
for I have committed my cause to you.
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Gospel
John 7:40-52
The Law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without hearing him
Several people who had been listening to Jesus said, ‘Surely he must be the prophet’, and some said, ‘He is the Christ’, but others said, ‘Would the Christ be from Galilee? Does not scripture say that the Christ must be descended from David and come from the town of Bethlehem?’ So the people could not agree about him. Some would have liked to arrest him, but no one actually laid hands on him.
The police went back to the chief priests and Pharisees who said to them, ‘Why haven’t you brought him?’ The police replied, ‘There has never been anybody who has spoken like him.’ ‘So’ the Pharisees answered ‘you have been led astray as well? Have any of the authorities believed in him? Any of the Pharisees? This rabble knows nothing about the Law – they are damned.’ One of them, Nicodemus – the same man who had come to Jesus earlier – said to them, ‘But surely the Law does not allow us to pass judgement on a man without giving him a hearing and discovering what he is about?’ To this they answered, ‘Are you a Galilean too? Go into the matter, and see for yourself: prophets do not come out of Galilee.’
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