Preview Mode Links will not work in preview mode

The BreadCast


Daily Exposition of the Readings for Catholic Mass...

as well as Prayers to the Saints on the General Roman Calendar (for the U.S.).  

From the books Our Daily Bread and Prayers to the Saints by James H. Kurt - both with imprimatur.

Nov 10, 2022

(2Jn.4-9;   Ps.119:1-2,10-11,17-18;   Lk.17:26-37)

 

“Anyone who remains rooted in the teaching

possesses both the Father and the Son.”

 

While “anyone who is so ‘progressive’ that he does not remain rooted in the teaching of Christ does not possess God.”  Rather, he possesses but the emptiness of this earth.

And what is this teaching so necessary for our salvation, for knowing and possessing the Lord our God?  It is indicated clearly in John’s request of the Lady to whom he writes (whom we may take as the Church herself): “Let us love one another.”  Here is the commandant we “have heard from the beginning,” which we need to find rooted in our hearts – this “commandant is the way in which [we] should walk.”  For “happy are they… who walk in the law of the Lord… who observe His decrees, who seek Him with all their hearts”; for they shall find Him, and they shall possess Him forever.

Love has come, brothers and sisters: Jesus Christ has “come in the flesh.”  And though the people in the days of Noah and in the days of Lot were particularly wicked and meriting condemnation from the Lord, they at that time did not have the Son of God come in their midst.  And so if their punishment was great for turning from the way and the call of God, how much greater will be our own if we set our hearts on the possessions of this land and thereby lose Him whose love knocks upon the door of our hearts?  It is now among those who deny Him as if they stand under the brightness of the noonday sun and say, “I see no light.  I feel not its heat.”  If we refuse to open our eyes to what is so obvious, what punishment will be enough for our souls?

Learn the lesson of the two men sleeping and the two women “grinding grain together.”  Though they lie and sit or stand in close proximity to one another in this place, seeming no different one from the next, yet “one will be taken and the other left.”  While one flies up to the reaches of heaven, the other will rot like a carcass on earth.  And why?  Who can tell which one says within his heart, “I treasure your promise, that I might not sin against you,” and which has turned his heart from the Lord?  “On the day the Son of Man is revealed,” so will be the thoughts of all hearts.  And He who is Love alone will know who owns the love He alone imparts.  He will say who has walked in His teaching. 

*******

O LORD, your Son calls us from our earthly lot  

to your kingdom on high –

let us walk His way of love that leads there this day.

YHWH, let us walk in your way, in the way your Son has marked out for us, He who has come in the flesh to show us indeed how we should live, how we should walk in this world.

And your way, O LORD, the way Jesus has trod, is the way of love.  This is your commandment to all souls; this is the truth He has revealed to all eyes.  And love is not turning to our own desires, putting faith in our possessions, in the empty things of this earth, but rather the laying down of our lives and all these things about us that we might come to you and serve you alone with all our lives.

Let us not be blind, dear LORD, to your Son’s coming and to your command.  Let us not continue in ignorance even as He stands at the gate.  Our very flesh let us give to you that the flesh we might transcend as we walk in purity with your Son.  Take us unto Heaven on the Day of His return.