Celebrate Sunday Mass - 6.27.21
Join us for Sunday Mass.
6/27/2021 (2 years ago)
By Deacon Keith Fournier
JUNE 27, 2021 -- 13th Sunday in Ordinary TimeDear Catholic Online Community and Catholic Online School students...
I AM HAPPY TO OFFER EACH OF YOU AN INVITATION TO SUNDAY MASS ON THE THIRTEENTH SUNDAY in OORDINARY TIME in the Catholic Diocese of Tyler. The response to offering these liturgies online has been overwhelming. The readings, as always, offer so much for us to reflect on. It is helpful to pray through them and reflect upon them before we assist at Holy Mass.
Our first reading is taken from the Book of Wisdom. Over all the years I have served as a Deacon of the Church, I have heard this reading mostly proclaimed at funerals. But it is an important reading for everyone to hear.
"God did not make death and He does not delight in the death of the living." Death came because of sin. The Apostle Paul wrote these words in his letter to the Romans ‽For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 6:23)
God loves us so much, that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sin, and to conquer death by His own death. The Book of wisdom continues "For God formed man to be in His Image, imperishable, the image of His own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world..."
And, because of the love of God, death is no longer an end for those who follow Jesus Christ, it is the door to life eternal. Jesus has been raised, and we have been raised with Him.
In the second reading, taken from St Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, we hear of another wonderful truth of the Christian faith: "You are well aware of the generosity which our Lord Jesus Christ had, that, although he was rich, he became poor for your sake, so that you should become rich through his poverty."
When we follow the Lord, He provides all that we need and frees us from the love of money. He also calls us to demonstrate His generosity in our own treatment of the poor, in all their manifestations. He works through us. And we should remember, there is more than economic poverty.
The Gospel for today's Holy Mass is taken from the fifth chapter of the Gospel of St Mark. Jesus raises the daughter of the synagogue Official Jairus' from the dead. Then, he heals the woman who had been afflicted with hemorrhages for twelve years.
Physical death is no longer to be feared by Christians. The real death is sin which kills the divine life of the soul.
Through taking on our human nature, Jesus did what we could not do for ourselves. He suffered the penalty for all the wrong choices, the sins, the misused and abused exercises of our human freedom.
He bridged the gap that had opened wide between the Father, who had created us for eternal communion, and the sons and daughters who had rejected His invitation. Jesus restored us to a higher place now, through His obedience unto death, even death on a Cross. Now, the stone is rolled away, and we live our lives now in Him.
In His sacred humanity, Jesus transformed the entirety of the human experience and invites us all into a new way of life, beginning right here, right now. This NEW WAY OF LIFE called Christianity leads us to fullness of life now and eternal life and love in the world to come.
He has torn the veil that existed between heaven and earth and opened the beauty and hope of eternity for all who were once bound by the chains of time.
May the Lord Jesus Christ be the center of your life and the heart of your home. Have a wonderful Lords Day.
Deacon Keith Fournier
Dean of Catholic Online School
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