The Word of God at Holy Mass Deeply Moved Me Today

Today, when the lector said "The Word of the Lord" to end the reading, I had warm tears in my eyes and was so choked up that I could barely whisper the customary response, "Thanks be to God."  I then made the reply in my heart, too, with my eyes closed looking up to Heaven.

I was standing at the very back of the church -- the narthex area -- by myself with my one-year old daughter who was strapped to me in a baby carrier.  She must have noticed something about me because when I looked down at her face after opening my eyes, she was just staring at me which she doesn't normally do.  Her hands were on my cheeks.  Her look all the more melted my heart which at that moment was already in deep gratitude to God.

My heart felt lighter, and I felt consolation for my years of service to Him which is only a blink of an eye to Him.  I felt physical strength and reinvigorated to once again endure the hardships for His name.

Following Christ is not always easy, especially when the persecution is internal by liberal Catholics who have an agenda to change the Church's teaching, and especially when they exile you for trying to promote the authentic teachings of the Church.  This type of persecution is, in some ways, worse in that the Catholic loyal to the Magisterium is made to look like a rebel and the virtue of obedience is used against the loyal Catholic.  People -- both within the Church and those outside looking in -- do not understand that there is an unprecedented internal war even within the highest ranks of the members of the Church herself.  But wisdom is vindicated (or at least someday will be). 

I highlighted the parts of St. Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians that profoundly moved my heart.

 

Monday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 365

Reading 12 COR 6:1-10

Brothers and sisters:
As your fellow workers, we appeal to you
not to receive the grace of God in vain.
For he says:

In an acceptable time I heard you,
and on the day of salvation I helped you.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time;
behold, now is the day of salvation.
We cause no one to stumble in anything,
in order that no fault may be found with our ministry;
on the contrary, in everything we commend ourselves
as ministers of God, through much endurance,
in afflictions, hardships, constraints,
beatings, imprisonments, riots,
labors, vigils, fasts;
by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness,
in the Holy Spirit, in unfeigned love, in truthful speech,
in the power of God;
with weapons of righteousness at the right and at the left;
through glory and dishonor, insult and praise.
We are treated as deceivers and yet are truthful;
as unrecognized and yet acknowledged;as dying and behold we live;
as chastised and yet not put to death;
as sorrowful yet always rejoicing;
as poor yet enriching many;
as having nothing and yet possessing all things.