We are citizens of heaven, children of God our Heavenly Father. All of us form one holy and apostolic Church, because we are built upon the foundation of the rock of Christ our Lord. And since we are one body in Him, we must exercise our gifts and charisms for the building up of His Church.
We have been empowered to lay hands, to heal, and to cast out demons. Yet many of us do not have the faith of a mustard seed to even try. If we are truly one in Him, and if all of us are bold and courageous enough to go out and minister to those He has sent our way, then we shall see the grandeur of our Lord’s glory upon the earth.
We would have opened the heavens so that His grace will be poured out abundantly on all of us and to the many He has sent our way. Amen.
Saints Simon and Jude, Apostles – pray for us…
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First reading
Ephesians 2:19-22 ·
In Christ you are no longer aliens, but citizens like us
You are no longer aliens or foreign visitors: you are citizens like all the saints, and part of God’s household. You are part of a building that has the apostles and prophets for its foundations, and Christ Jesus himself for its main cornerstone. As every structure is aligned on him, all grow into one holy temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built into a house where God lives, in the Spirit.
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Gospel
Luke 6:12-19
Jesus chooses his twelve apostles
Jesus went out into the hills to pray; and he spent the whole night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’: Simon whom he called Peter, and his brother Andrew; James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon called the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.
He then came down with them and stopped at a piece of level ground where there was a large gathering of his disciples with a great crowd of people from all parts of Judaea and from Jerusalem and from the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon who had come to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. People tormented by unclean spirits were also cured, and everyone in the crowd was trying to touch him because power came out of him that cured them all.
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