Greetings on this the Thursday of the Twenty-first Week in Ordinary Time
Readings: 1 Thes 3:7-13; Ps 90:3-5a, 12-13, 14 and 17; Mt 24:42-51
Notes:
The Catholic Church has a diversity of opinions, that is for sure.
Interesting reading:
Right Foot In https://www.ncregister.com/cna/word-on-fire-s-bishop-barron-we-ve-dumbed-down-the-faith-too-much-for-too-long
Left Foot Out https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-voices/why-does-bishop-barron-keep-attacking-pope-francis-allies
Do the Hokey Pokey https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/30/world/europe/pope-francis-american-conservatives.html
For me, it is very tempting to hide in the diaconal service of charity. I mean, how can you go wrong just helping people with food and water?
But you can go wrong there too!
Many competing theories on how to assist people without creating or perpetuating an underclass by mistake.
Difficult.
Difficult indeed.
Stay awake!
Ever mindful of the harmony needed between our intention and our action. Who among us is not tempted this way in some manner particular to our own life: [the] servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards,
Perhaps these two quotes will help:
In fact, the principal agent of evangelization is the Holy Spirit.
[Do not] suffocate the “meekness of the Spirit in the conversion.”
First Reading
Now may God himself, our Father, and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you, and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.
Responsorial
Fill us with your love, O Lord, and we will sing for joy!
Gospel Acclamation
Stay awake!
For you do not know when the Son of Man will come.
Gospel
Jesus said to his disciples:
“Stay awake!
[Are you] put in charge of his household to distribute to them their food at the proper time?
Blessed is that servant whom his master on his arrival finds doing so.
OR
But if that wicked servant says to himself, ‘My master is long delayed,’ and begins to beat his fellow servants, and eat and drink with drunkards, the servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
Peace be with you,
Deacon Gerry