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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 21, 2023

(2Mac.7:1,20-31;   Ps.17:1,5-6,8,15;   Lk.19:11-28)

“He, in His mercy, will give you back both breath and life,

because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of His Law.”

When the Lord returns “crowned as king” He will call all before Himself and judge each according to the profit he has made with his life.  If we are like the seven brothers who suffered and died for the faith, if we have been like the good servants who invested wisely the gifts left with them by the Lord, we shall come into His reign.  If we have wasted His talents or, God forbid, have persecuted, as Antiochus – who “contrived every kind of affliction for the Hebrews” – those who strive with the Lord to remain faithful to His call, we “will not escape the hands of God.”  He will come to judge; in justice He is known.

“On waking, I shall be content in your presence,” sings David in our psalm, expressing the hope of those whose “steps have been steadfast” in the paths of God.  And how this hope in the coming kingdom is embodied by the seven brothers with their mother “who were arrested and tortured with whips and scourges by the king” – how well they presage the suffering and death of Jesus, and the sword which pierces His mother’s heart.  The mother’s words are particularly beautiful and wise as she witnesses to her sons that she was not the author of their lives: “It was not I who gave you the breath of life, nor was it I who set in order the elements of which each of you is composed,” thus stirring them to faith in “the Creator of the universe who shapes each man’s beginning” and holds the life of all in His hands.  Hear her words of exhortation to faith spoken to her youngest son: “I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see all that is in them; then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things.”  And so she encourages him to “accept death, so that in the time of mercy [she] may receive [him] again.”  Here, certainly, is our faith in essence.  Here the hope we have in the Lord is lived.

The Lord has gone from us to the “faraway country” of heaven to receive His kingship and return for our souls.  He has left with each of His servants gifts for the time of waiting.  Today He and His heavenly kingdom are not far away for He is very present in His Church, in her priests and the sacraments, in the Word of God revealed to us, in the sky upon which we gaze to see His handiwork… in all things we know Him and for all our needs He provides.  Let us not be afraid to live with Him and so to die for Him, to disregard our very lives in the employment of His talents… and the breath and life we do so cherish shall be ours forever in heaven.

*******

O LORD, Jesus goes to the Cross, but He shall return;

He shall return and judge the souls of all.

YHWH, your Son has gone from us to a faraway land, to your side in the kingdom of Heaven.  And if we wish to join Him there, we must employ well the talents He leaves us now in His stead.  We must be willing to lay down our lives as He has done if we are to enter into His reign in the time of mercy.

O may your Son come to us even this day, dear LORD!  May we know His presence among us in the gifts and graces He leaves us in His sacraments and in His Word.  And may we work each day to increase their yield upon this earth, until He returns in glory.

Soon He shall return and we must stand strong in the face of death and torture, before the evils contrived by the hands of men.  For you, O LORD, who made the heavens and the earth shall reward every man who gives witness to your love.  We shall wake in your presence; breath and life will be ours in your eternal kingdom.