Shalom

7 Dec Fri	1st Week of Advent
	Is. 29:17-24 Ps. 27:1, 4, 13-14 Mt. 9:27-31

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Isaiah's optimistic view of his people's final rescue by God embraces wonderful changes. Mountain land becomes orchards, darkened eyes see, closed ears hear words, tyrants disappear from the earth! Christians see these prophecies beginning their fulfilment in the astonishing cures that Jesus worked. Truly He is God with us "Emmanuel".

The picture of the two blind men hurrying to follow Jesus and crying for help shows us how we should follow Him with our desires and hopes. Our persistence in hope will help us to appreciate all the more what we receive from God and to love the one who gives. What comes to us too easily is hardly appreciated. Jesus' desire for a personal encounter with the two eager petitioners tells us that we must relate to the Lord with personal faith. This will reveal our belief in His power to help and especially in His goodness in wanting to assist us. When the Lord touches us, we must be confident that His love will overcome every obstacle, even the ones we set up through fear or selfishness.

Jesus warns the healed men not to speak of the event, to keep His "messianic secret". He Himself must become blind, deaf and die, and rise from the dead, before the Kingdom of God comes with power. Jesus must not merely touch the eyes of the sick but share their condition, and ours, completely.

Lord Jesus, come into the world, and let us all see Your power and goodness.

DAILY OFFERING

Eternal Father, I offer You everything I do this day; my thoughts, words, joys and sufferings. Grant that, vivified by the Holy Spirit and united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my life this day may be of service to You and to others. I also pray that all those preparing for marriage discover in Sacrament the source of Christ's grace for living a fithful and fruitful love. Amen.

PRAYING WITH THE CHURCH

INTENTION
That Christians may free themselves from the subtle forms of cultural conditioning which prevent them from recognising the dignity and rights of others
Elaboration

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P R A Y I N G W I T H T H E C H U R C H

INTENTION :	That Christians may free themselves from the subtle forms of cultural conditioning which prevent them from recognising the dignity and rights of others
Our vocation and mission as Christians is to bring the light of Christ to the world in order to preserve the world from corruption by permeating it with the values of the Gospel. We need, ourselves, first and foremost to be enlightened by Christ. We do not generate light, we only refract, reflect and radiate. It is His light that we must cast on the world. The more transparent our lives are with the values of the Gospel, the better is the light of Christ reflected and the less we are seen. The world in which we live is mixed with wheat and weeds. There is good and evil. Consumerism is but the logical sequence of a materialistic way of life. Spiritual values are forgotten. Our wants are made to appear as our needs and we are forced to get so immersed in the joys of this world as to forget the joys of the world to come. We are admonished to be aware lest we be trapped by these and other forms of cultural conditioning that mark this world. Awareness is the first step to change. We pray that this awareness may help us to be delivered from the cultural conditioning that hinders and hampers our vision and prevents us from recognising the dignity and the rights of others.
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