MASS READINGS AND MEDITATION | JULY 5, 2020

Thus says the LORD:
Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion,
shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem!
See, your king shall come to you;
a just savior is he,
meek, and riding on an ass,
on a colt, the foal of an ass.
He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim,
and the horse from Jerusalem;
the warrior’s bow shall be banished,
and he shall proclaim peace to the nations.
His dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.

R. (cf. 1) I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I will extol you, O my God and King,
and I will bless your name forever and ever.
Every day will I bless you,
and I will praise your name forever and ever.

R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
The LORD is good to all
and compassionate toward all his works.

R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD,
and let your faithful ones bless you.
Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom
and speak of your might.

R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R.  Alleluia.
The LORD is faithful in all his words
and holy in all his works.
The LORD lifts up all who are falling
and raises up all who are bowed down.

R. I will praise your name for ever, my king and my God.
or:
R.  Alleluia.

Brothers and sisters:
You are not in the flesh;
on the contrary, you are in the spirit,
if only the Spirit of God dwells in you.
Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.
If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you,
the one who raised Christ from the dead
will give life to your mortal bodies also,
through his Spirit that dwells in you.
Consequently, brothers and sisters,
we are not debtors to the flesh,
to live according to the flesh.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die,
but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,
you will live.

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Blessed are you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth;
you have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

At that time Jesus exclaimed:
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
for although you have hidden these things
from the wise and the learned
you have revealed them to little ones.
Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will.
All things have been handed over to me by my Father.
No one knows the Son except the Father,
and no one knows the Father except the Son
and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.”

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,
for I am meek and humble of heart;
and you will find rest for yourselves.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Catechism of the Catholic Church

33 The human person: with his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God’s existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the “seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material”,9 can have its origin only in God.

“For greater things you were born.” (Ven. Mother Luisita)

SUNDAY, JULY 5^TH    Mt. 11: 25-30   “Come to me all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

St. Faustina gave us the diary, Divine Mercy in My Soul. To date, over 1,000,000 copies have been sold. Why? Jesus wants us to know and have great Trust in His Divine Mercy!

A Benedictine Monk, who remains anonymous, gives us his journal In Sinu Jesu. When Heart Speaks to Heart. The Journal of a Priest at Prayers. Why? Jesus wants especially His priests, but also His lay-people to adore and love Him in the Blessed Sacrament daily, in order to draw us into a deep, abiding friendship with Him that will lead to union of our soul with the Blessed Trinity – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For this we were created!

The most amazing part is that our work is to do a Holy Hour every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament – even on-line in these times of Covid-19 – and Jesus will do the rest! Every word of Jesus in this book confirms that! In these times, I adore Jesus truly present in the Blessed Sacrament on EWTN Live Adoration from Tyburn Convent.

Clearly Jesus wants to renew and revitalize His priesthood with this book! But this book is also for lay-people, for us! In the Introduction, the monk writes…

Intro vii:
“I have been repeatedly told by Our Lord Himself that His words are meant for the blessing, instruction, and comfort of many Christians today…. I gladly give this journal into the hands of all those readers whom Our Lord and Our Lady have already chosen for it, with my prayer that it shall bear abundant fruit, and with my priestly blessing.”

We will pray with two striking passages in the book In Sinu Jesu  that speak to today’s Gospel:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt. 11: 28-30)

PART I…  From Journal dated Tuesday, May 12, 2009… Remember, Jesus is speaking to us – to you and to me!

JESUS:
Your Weakness is My gift to you. Instead of offering Me your achievements, offer Me your poverty, your weakness, your very failure to achieve great things, and I, in turn, will accept your offering and, uniting it to My own all-sufficient Passion, will make it fruitful for My priests and for all My Church.

So long as you come to Me humbled by your weakness and animated by a holy desire for Me alone, I will overlook the other faults that affect you in My mercy. I will erase them and give you, in their place, graces and mercies that I have chosen and designated for you and for no other, and this from all eternity.

My plan for you is not the one you have created and entertained in your mind. My plan for you is the one that is unfolding day after day in all the humiliations and apparent failure to achieve good things that make up this phase of your life.

Accept your weaknesses, and then offer them to Me; offer them to Me through My Mother. Place them in her hands and entrust them to her most pure Heart. Every weakness entrusted to My Mother becomes an occasion of grace and an outpouring of My merciful love into the soul that suffers it.

Trust not in what you do for Me but, rather, in what I will do for you, for I am all love, and I am all-powerful, and you have won the love of My Heart, and I shall never take from you what is Mine to give.

How have you won the love of My Hear, you ask. By learning to say sincerely and with confidence, “O Jesus, King of Love, I put my trust in Thy merciful goodness.” That little invocation expresses all that a soul needs to say to win My Heart’s tenderness and favor.

PART II… From Journal dated January 9, 2010… Again, Jesus is speaking to you and to me!

JESUS:
Make Me the object of all your desires and you will never be disappointed. Seek Me and you will find Me. Ask for the grace of My presence in the inner sanctuary of your soul, and there hold conversations with me, for I am in you, and you are in Me.

I am your life, and apart from Me, all that this earthly life offers you is bitter and unable to satisfy your heart. I have created you and called you to live in My friendship and to long for Me on earth until that longing is satisfied in heaven.

In the meantime, for as long as your earthly exile lasts, you have Me in the Sacrament of My love. There you have My Heart; there you can contemplate My Face; there you can hear My voice; there you can enjoy My friendship and live in My presence. I was no more really present to My Apostles, than I am to you at this moment in the Sacrament of My love. Do you believe this?

I will strengthen your faith in My real presence and make it so strong that the rest of your life will rest upon it as upon a solid rock.

I am making you the adorer of My Eucharistic Face that I have so long desired. Allow Me to form you, to shape you, to purify and to illuminate you in preparation for the work that I have given you to do.

You have only to abide in My presence. The work of adoration is also and first of all, My work in you. When you are before My Eucharistic Face and so close to My Heart, I am acting in you and acting upon You. Your whole being is subject to My divine influence when you present yourself before Me to adore Me.

This is why I insist on adoration. It is the crucible of your perfection. It is the furnace of love in which I purify you like gold in the fire. I draw you to My Heart, and speak to you face-to-face, as a man to his best friend.

My humanity offers you a divine friendship, but that friendship leads to the union of your soul with My divinity and to a fruitfulness that surpasses every action and work of yours acting on your own initiative.

Consent to My friendship and I will espouse your soul. Thus will you be Mine in a way that exceeds every purely human notion of union, even the union between two souls in the purest charity.

I created your soul for this espousal with My divinity, and your soul will have failed to attain that for which I created it, and that for which I desire for you, unless you allow Me to love you and to purify you and to unite Me to yourself, not only as friend to friend, but also as the One and Thrice Holy God to His beloved creature.

I am one with My Father and with the Holy Spirit, and when I love a soul and espouse a soul to Myself, that soul is also united and espoused to the Father and to the Holy Spirit. This is a mystical espousal; I speak of union of the soul with God, the realization for which the soul was created, and the fulfillment of the soul’s truest longings.

All this you can read in the Fourth Gospel. For Saint John, in resting his head upon My Heart, was given an understanding of all these mysteries. He is the patron and friend of all who seek perfect union with Me, and through Me with the Father, in the Holy Spirit.

For this reason, I have given him to you to be your protector and to intercede for you in these final years of life on earth. I desire that you should be led to the imitation of Saint John, and that many should be led to the imitation of St. John in his friendship with Me and in his sublime union with My divinity.

Why should I not hold conversation with you who are the friend of My Heart? I speak in this way to many souls, but not all recognize My voice, and very few welcome My conversation and receive My friendship as the freely given gift that it is.

It is My delight to hold conversation with those whom I love. Understand that I hold conversation with you because I love you with an infinitely merciful and tender love and because I set My Heart upon you long ago to make you entirely mine.

End of In Sinu Jesu

PART III

 St. Louis de Montfort died in 1716. What he described over 300 years ago is what Jesus is promising now, today to those who will spend one hour daily in prayer, in meditation, and in conversation with Him in His Presence in the Blessed Sacrament!

CALL TO HOLINESS   By St. Louis de Montfort

Chosen soul, living image of God and redeemed by the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, God wants you to become holy like Him in this life, and glorious like Him in the next. 

It is certain that growth in the holiness of God is your vocation. All your thoughts, words, actions, everything you suffer or undertake must lead you toward that end. Otherwise you are resisting God in not doing the work for which He created you and for which He is even now keeping you in being. 

What a marvelous transformation is possible!  Dust into light, uncleanness into purity, sinfulness into holiness, creature being taken up into Creator! A marvelous work, I repeat, so difficult in itself, and even impossible for a mere creature to bring about, for only God can accomplish it by giving His grace abundantly and in an extraordinary manner. The very creation of the universe is not as great an achievement as this.