Romans 9:1-5 / Luke 14:1-6
This week has been a rather spiritual week so far. Spiritual in the sense that we came for Mass on Wednesday because it was a day of obligation (All Saints)
We came for Mass on Thursday for a commemoration and remembrance (All Souls)
And today we have come for Mass out of devotion (First Friday and Devotion to the Sacred Heart)
But it is not just spiritual because we came for Mass. It is spiritual because in the celebration of All Saints and All Souls, we become more aware of the spiritual world and we are led deeper into it.
And in this spiritual invisible world, we have the Saints who are praying for us and then we in turn pray for the souls in Purgatory that they will eventually rest in the peace of God.
If we want to know the intensity of the prayer of the Saints, then it would not be too excessive to borrow the words of St. Paul in the 1st reading: What I want to say is this - my sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless, I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers.
St. Paul was talking about his own people, the people of Israel, his own flesh and blood. And they had almost every spiritual blessing - they were adopted as sons, they were given the glory and the covenants, the Law and the ritual were drawn up for them, and the promises were made to them. They were descended from the patriarchs and from among them came Jesus Christ.
But they did not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the Saviour who died in order to save them, and hence the anguish and the sorrow of St. Paul.
That is also the anguish and sorrow of the Saints when we turn away from God by our sins, and they could only look on helplessly as we ignore their desire to pray for us and help us to come closer to God and grow in holiness.
But if that is the anguish and the sorrow of the Saints, then what about the anguish and sorrow of the Saviour who willingly accepted the Cross and sacrificed His life to save us?
So today we have come to honour the Sacred Heart of Jesus for later for the Devotion to express our love for Him and to do reparation for our sins and expiation for the sins of others.
We pray for the healing of sins of the Church and the world so that there will be conversion and repentance and salvation.
Let us make it our obligation to make Jesus known so that anguish and sorrow will be turned to hope and joy.