Menu
Today, 6th of December, we celebrate
Saint Nicholas
First Reading: Jeremiah 13:1-11
The Lord said to me: Go buy yourself a linen loincloth;
Responsorial Psalm: Deuteronomy 32:18-19, 20, 21
R./ You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
You were unmindful of the Rock that begot you,
You forgot the God who gave you birth.
When the Lord saw this, he was filled with loathing
and anger toward his sons and daughters.
R./ You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
"I will hide my face from them," he said,
"and see what will then become of them.
What a fickle race they are,
sons with no loyalty in them!"
R./ You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
"Since they have provoked me with their 'no-god'
and angered me with their vain idols,
I will provoke them with a 'no-people';
with a foolish nation I will anger them."
R./ You have forgotten God who gave you birth.
Gospel Reading: Matthew 13:31-35
Jesus proposed a parable to the crowds.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed
that a person took and sowed in a field.
It is the smallest of all the seeds,
yet when full-grown it is the largest of plants.
It becomes a large bush,
and the 'birds of the sky come and dwell in its branches.'"
He spoke to them another parable.
"The Kingdom of heaven is like yeast
that a woman took and mixed with three measures of wheat flour
until the whole batch was leavened."
All these things Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables.
He spoke to them only in parables,
to fulfill what had been said through the prophet:
I will open my mouth in parables,
I will announce what has lain hidden from the foundation
of the world.
To believe is to have life
Today, the Church honors Martha, Mary, and Lazarus for their hospitality and testimony to Christ. In 2020, Pope Francis approved the modification of the liturgical feast of St. Martha on July 29 to include her sister and brother, Mary and Lazarus, on the church’s universal calendar of feast days.
The Gospel recounts how Jesus comforted the family of three siblings—Martha, Mary, and Lazarus—following the death of one of them. His sisters, Martha and Mary, reported their brother’s illness to Jesus by simply saying, “The one you love is ill.” At a deeper level, this phrase applies to each of us.
Biblical scholars today explain that this family of three siblings represents the community of brothers and sisters whom Jesus loves. In this family of Bethany, there is no mention of a father, mother, spouses or children. It represents the Christian community where all are brothers and sisters, children of God the Father. The evangelist places great emphasis on the friendship between Jesus and these siblings. It symbolizes the deep bond between Jesus and every disciple: “I do not call you servants”— Jesus would tell later at the Last Supper—»but I have called you friends” (Jn 15:15).
Jesus does not come to the house of the siblings, Instead, he waits outside the village for thesisters to come out of the house, where everyone is crying. The Lord invites them to come out of their world of frustration and despair to the new world of faith, hope and happiness.
‘If you had been here, our brother would not have died’ is the complaint of the two sisters. Many individuals start to question the existence of God when they encounter death. They wonder why there is death if God is real. The reality is that those who have faith in Jesus are already in eternal life with the Lord. Physical life on this earth is a period of gestation and transition to the world of God.
The Feast of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary is the feast of the Christian community. These three siblings remind us to get out of our surroundings of hopelessness, fear, and weeping and to believe in the joy of the resurrection.
bibleclaret
Opening Prayer
Curb our impatience Lord,Litrugy of the Word
Introduction to the First Reading:
God's love made his people as close to God as a loincloth is close to the human body. Jeremiah's symbolic action tells the people that by embracing the idolatry of Babylonia, they have given up God's tenderness and become like rotten.
Gospel Introduction:
A tiny seed becomes a tree. At the beginning, when one hears it and accepts it, the Word of God is only a tiny seed, and when it is contested and contradicted, as it was in the early Church and is often again today, it looks insignificant, negligible. What is it, in comparison with the powerful media? But it is meant to grow and to become little by little a kingdom of love and justice that overcomes all contradiction and hatred.
General Intercessions
– That the tiny seed still alive in the hearts of many who abandon the Church may not be extinguished but grow again into a bright light to guide them to God and people, we pray:
– That missionaries may keep sowing the seed of the Lord's joyful Good News in our often indifferent and hostile world, we pray:
– That the seed of sharing and unity may keep growing in our Christian communities, until they become one heart and one mind in the Lord who gathers them at his table, let us pray:
Prayer over the Gifts
Almighty and patient Father,
we bring before you the fruits
grown from tiny seeds of wheat
and the small shoots of the vine.
By the power of your Spirit,
they will become Jesus, your Son among us.
Let the seed of his life and message
bear fruit among us, your people
and make us the body of Christ to the world.
We ask this through Christ, our Lord.
Prayer after Communion
God our Father,
with a generous hand you have sown among us
the seed of all that is good and true,
your Son, Jesus Christ.
However insignificant and disappointing
our faith and love may seem now,
give us the hope and the courage
that he can unite us in a community
where justice, truth, and freedom will prevail
until the crop is ripe for reaping.
Grant us this through Christ, our Lord.
Blessing
All growth is slow, so slow that it is almost invisible. All that grows needs time. That is the way the Word of God in which we believe has to grow among us and to become a kingdom where people respond to God's fidelity and work out God's plans. May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
