Posts Tagged ‘catholicjules’

On Today’s Gospel

Posted: July 10, 2021 by CatholicJules in Personal Thoughts & Reflections
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Just two days ago I was inspired to share that God our loving Father can turn all curses into Blessings all we need is to remain faithful. And once again today we are reminded of this in today’s first reading. Why? perhaps the world in which we live in today with all its trials and challenges of the pandemic needs to be reassured that God our Heavenly Father is watching over all of us and is continuing to pour His many Blessings upon us in so many varied ways. Through faithfulness in Him many of us Christians are standing together, fighting this pandemic and its fallout in solidarity with the rest of our sisters brothers in the world.

As children of God our Heavenly Father so loved by Him, it is our duty as faithful children to share His love with one and all. Too many are distressed and are feeling very alone in this struggle to survive in this ever changing world. Why are we still so afraid to reach out them? Is fear of rejection or failure our excuse? Jesus was rejected and abused and still He continued to reach out to us in love, can we do any less for our brethren?

Jesus You are my Lord and my God! Let me declare this to the world by my love put into action for You and for my brethren. Amen

First reading
Genesis 49:29-33,50:15-26
‘God has turned the evil you planned into good’

Jacob gave his sons these instructions, ‘I am about to be gathered to my people. Bury me near my fathers, in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave in the field at Machpelah, opposite Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite as a burial-plot. There Abraham was buried and his wife Sarah. There Isaac was buried and his wife Rebekah. There I buried Leah. I mean the field and the cave in it that were bought from the sons of Heth.’
When Jacob had finished giving his instructions to his sons, he drew his feet up into the bed, and breathing his last was gathered to his people.
Seeing that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers said, ‘What if Joseph intends to treat us as enemies and repay us in full for all the wrong we did him?’ So they sent this message to Joseph: ‘Before your father died he gave us this order: “You must say to Joseph: Oh forgive your brothers their crime and their sin and all the wrong they did you.” Now therefore, we beg you, forgive the crime of the servants of your father’s God.’ Joseph wept at the message they sent to him.
His brothers came themselves and fell down before him. ‘We present ourselves before you’ they said ‘as your slaves.’ But Joseph answered them, ‘Do not be afraid; is it for me to put myself in God’s place? The evil you planned to do me has by God’s design been turned to good, that he might bring about, as indeed he has, the deliverance of a numerous people. So you need not be afraid; I myself will provide for you and your dependants.’ In this way he reassured them with words that touched their hearts.
So Joseph stayed in Egypt with his father’s family; and Joseph lived a hundred and ten years. Joseph saw the third generation of Ephraim’s children, as also the children of Machir, Manasseh’s son, who were born on Joseph’s lap. At length Joseph said to his brothers, ‘I am about to die; but God will be sure to remember you kindly and take you back from this country to the land that he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.’ And Joseph made Israel’s sons swear an oath, ‘When God remembers you with kindness be sure to take my bones from here.’
Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten; they embalmed him and laid him in his coffin in Egypt.

Gospel
Matthew 10:24-33
Everything now hidden will be made clear

Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘The disciple is not superior to his teacher, nor the slave to his master. It is enough for the disciple that he should grow to be like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, what will they not say of his household?
‘Do not be afraid of them therefore. For everything that is now covered will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.
‘Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; fear him rather who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing. Why, every hair on your head has been counted. So there is no need to be afraid; you are worth more than hundreds of sparrows.
‘So if anyone declares himself for me in the presence of men, I will declare myself for him in the presence of my Father in heaven. But the one who disowns me in the presence of men, I will disown in the presence of my Father in heaven.’

On Today’s Gospel

Posted: June 18, 2021 by CatholicJules in Personal Thoughts & Reflections
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I have never and probably will never suffer beatings, starvation and the hardships St Paul went through for being a servant of Christ Jesus our Lord. But I know what it like to suffer through humility, challenges and personal sacrifices to be His disciple and to have made disciples of others. And the rewards I have received is to witness the fruitfulness of His peace, love and joy in the lives of those I had served. It does not matter to me if I am remembered at all for my little insignificant contributions in the past, what matters most to me is that I must continue to contribute in every way I can to build His Kingdom.

Knowing that I have limited time left, I have dwelled on what is important to me. Indeed I treasure my relationship with my parents, my wife and children, my church community and all those our Lord has sent my way. But most of all I treasure my faith, trust and loving relationship I have with my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! I am very far from perfect, but I hold to the hope of perfection through Him who loves me.

Lord Jesus I pray that Your light shine away all darkness in our lives. And let Your light shine through us as we endeavour to glorify You by our lives. Amen

First reading

2 Corinthians 11:18,21-30

If I am to boast, let me boast of my own feebleness

So many others have been boasting of their worldly achievements, that I will boast myself. But if anyone wants some brazen speaking – I am still talking as a fool – then I can be as brazen as any of them, and about the same things. Hebrews, are they? So am I. Israelites? So am I. Descendants of Abraham? So am I. The servants of Christ? I must be mad to say this, but so am I, and more than they: more, because I have worked harder, I have been sent to prison more often, and whipped many times more, often almost to death. Five times I had the thirty-nine lashes from the Jews; three times I have been beaten with sticks; once I was stoned; three times I have been shipwrecked and once adrift in the open sea for a night and a day. Constantly travelling, I have been in danger from rivers and in danger from brigands, in danger from my own people and in danger from pagans; in danger in the towns, in danger in the open country, danger at sea and danger from so-called brothers. I have worked and laboured, often without sleep; I have been hungry and thirsty and often starving; I have been in the cold without clothes. And, to leave out much more, there is my daily preoccupation: my anxiety for all the churches. When any man has had scruples, I have had scruples with him; when any man is made to fall, I am tortured.

    If I am to boast, then let me boast of my own feebleness.

Gospel

Matthew 6:19-23

Store up treasure for yourselves in heaven

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moths and woodworms destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworms destroy them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

    ‘The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light. But if your eye is diseased, your whole body will be all darkness. If then, the light inside you is darkness, what darkness that will be!’

Third Sunday of Easter

Posted: April 17, 2021 by CatholicJules in Sunday Reflections
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Understanding the Scriptures: Scott Hahn Reflects on the Third Sunday of Easter

Readings:
Acts 3:13–15, 17–19
Psalm 4:2, 4, 7–9
1 John 2:1–5
Luke 24:35–48
 
Jesus in today’s Gospel teaches His apostles how to interpret the Scriptures.

He tells them that all the Scriptures of what we now call the Old Testament refer to Him. He says that all the promises found in the Old Testament have been fulfilled in His Passion, death, and Resurrection. And He tells them that these Scriptures foretell the mission of the Church—to preach forgiveness of sins to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
In today’s First Reading and Epistle, we see the beginnings of that mission. And we see the apostles interpreting the Scriptures as Jesus taught them to.

God has brought to fulfillment what He announced beforehand in all the prophets, Peter preaches. His sermon is shot through with Old Testament images. He evokes Moses and the Exodus, in which

God revealed himself as the ancestral God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (see Exodus 3:6, 15). He identifies Jesus as Isaiah’s suffering servant who has been glorified (see Isaiah 52:13).

John, too, describes Jesus in Old Testament terms. Alluding to how Israel’s priests offered blood sacrifices to atone for the people’s sins (see Leviticus 16; Hebrews 9–10), he says that Jesus intercedes for us before God (see Romans 8:34), and that His blood is a sacrificial expiation for the sins of the world (see 1 John 1:7).

Notice that in all three readings, the Scriptures are interpreted to serve and advance the Church’s mission—to reveal the truth about Jesus, to bring people to repentance, the wiping away of sins, and the perfection of their love for God.

This is how we, too, should hear the Scriptures. Not to know more “about” Jesus, but to truly know Him personally, and to know His plan for our lives.

In the Scriptures, the light of His face shines upon us, as we sing in today’s Psalm. We know the wonders He has done throughout history. And we have the confidence to call to Him, and to know that He hears and answers.