What are you complaining about? How everyone seems to be judging you? How tired and miserable you are with plodding through many work commitments ? How much you are sacrificing for your family to feed your lifestyle and theirs? How much if any of it, is in bringing the message of Christ Jesus to anyone or every one? Are you struggling to bring your child or children up in the faith? How much of the sufferings you endure is for building His Kingdom through the community? How generous and charitable are you with your time, actions and not your purse? Can you even identify with the hunger and thirst of those genuinely suffering because they have nothing to eat or drink? No one to care or comfort them? Again what are you complaining about?
Let us stay awake sisters and brothers! We have a mission and that is to share the love of the Lord our God with everyone. So that in coming to know our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ they might have life to the full in Him now and forevermore. No hardships and sufferings should ever deter us from sharing the joy of the Gospel because God’s Spirit is within us. We may not have all the answers at hand but we will have it as needed through the power and working of the Holy Spirit. God our loving Father will provide for all that we need, let us only stay focused on Jesus our Lord and strive to live life in the Spirit. Amen
First reading
Genesis 46:1-7,28-30
‘I can die, now that I have seen you alive’
Israel left Canaan with his possessions, and reached Beersheba. There he offered sacrifices to the God of his father Isaac. God spoke to Israel in a vision at night, ‘Jacob, Jacob’, he said. ‘I am here’, he replied. ‘I am God, the God of your father’, he continued. ‘Do not be afraid of going down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. I myself will go down to Egypt with you. I myself will bring you back again, and Joseph’s hand shall close your eyes.’ Then Jacob left Beersheba. Israel’s sons conveyed their father Jacob, their little children and their wives in the waggons Pharaoh had sent to fetch him.
Taking their livestock and all that they had acquired in the land of Canaan, they went to Egypt, Jacob and all his family with him: his sons and his grandsons, his daughters and his grand-daughters, in a word, all his children he took with him to Egypt.
Israel sent Judah ahead to Joseph, so that the latter might present himself to him in Goshen. When they arrived in the land of Goshen, Joseph had his chariot made ready and went up to meet his father Israel in Goshen. As soon as he appeared he threw his arms round his neck and for a long time wept on his shoulder. Israel said to Joseph, ‘Now I can die, now that I have seen you again, and seen you still alive.’
Gospel
Matthew 10:16-23
The Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you
Jesus instructed the Twelve as follows: ‘Remember, I am sending you out like sheep among wolves; so be cunning as serpents and yet as harmless as doves.
‘Beware of men: they will hand you over to sanhedrins and scourge you in their synagogues. You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake, to bear witness before them and the pagans. But when they hand you over, do not worry about how to speak or what to say; what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it is not you who will be speaking; the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you. ‘Brother will betray brother to death, and the father his child; children will rise against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by all men on account of my name; but the man who stands firm to the end will be saved. If they persecute you in one town, take refuge in the next; and if they persecute you in that, take refuge in another. I tell you solemnly, you will not have gone the round of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man comes.’
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