Image Daily Prayers
First reading 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18
Do not grieve about those who have died in Jesus
We want you to be quite certain, brothers, about those who have died, to make sure that you do not grieve about them, like the other people who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and that it will be the same for those who have died in Jesus: God will bring them with him. We can tell you this from the Lord’s own teaching, that any of us who are left alive until the Lord’s coming will not have any advantage over those who have died. At the trumpet of God, the voice of the archangel will call out the command and the Lord himself will come down from heaven; those who have died in Christ will be the first to rise, and then those of us who are still alive will be taken up in the clouds, together with them; to meet the Lord in the air. So we shall stay with the Lord for ever. With such thoughts as these you should comfort one another.
Responsorial Psalm 95(96):1,3-5,11-13
The Lord comes to rule the earth.
O sing a new song to the Lord,
sing to the Lord all the earth.
Tell among the nations his glory
and his wonders among all the peoples.
The Lord comes to rule the earth.
The Lord is great and worthy of praise,
to be feared above all gods;
the gods of the heathens are naught.
It was the Lord who made the heavens,
The Lord comes to rule the earth.
Let the heavens rejoice and earth be glad,
let the sea and all within it thunder praise,
let the land and all it bears rejoice,
all the trees of the wood shout for joy
at the presence of the Lord for he comes,
he comes to rule the earth.
The Lord comes to rule the earth.
With justice he will rule the world,
he will judge the peoples with his truth.
The Lord comes to rule the earth.
Gospel Luke 4:16-30
‘This text is being fulfilled today, even as you listen’
Jesus came to Nazara, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me,
for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
to proclaim liberty to captives
and to the blind new sight,
to set the downtrodden free,
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’ And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips. They said, ‘This is Joseph’s son, surely?’
But he replied, ‘No doubt you will quote me the saying, “Physician, heal yourself” and tell me, “We have heard all that happened in Capernaum, do the same here in your own countryside.”’
And he went on, ‘I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.
‘There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah’s day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha’s time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.’
When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.
__________________________
God’s love is for all
The people of Nazareth were impressed with Jesus initially, but later, their views changed when the good news that He spoke about became bad news for them. What made them switch from admiring Jesus to rejecting Him?
Jesus spoke about the need to include others because God’s love embraced the Jews and the gentiles, the saints and the sinners, the rich and the poor. The listeners’ narrow-mindedness could not accept the God that Jesus came to reveal.
For them, God was the God of Israel. When we reflect on the gospel stories, we are constantly challenged by Jesus to open our narrow-mindedness about our understanding of God.
God’s love is for all, especially the sinners, the mentally ill people, the migrants, the “rebellious” teens, and those who find themselves on the margins at one point of their lives.
Today, let us rejoice that everyone has a place in God’s heart and ask for the grace to have a heart like His.
Question for reflection:
Is there anyone in my family, workplace, parish, neighbourhood that I find it hard to accept and include him/her in my life?
