Fourth Week in Ordinary Time

February 4, 2017
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Entrance Antiphon

Save us, O Lord our God! And gather us from the nations,
to give thanks to your holy name, and make it our glory to
praise you.

Collect

Grant us, Lord our God, that we may honor you with all our
mind, and love everyone in truth of heart. Through our Lord
Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the
unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Prayer Over the Offerings

O Lord, we bring to your altar, these offerings of our service;

be pleased to receive them, we pray, and transform them into
the Sacrament of our redemption. Through Christ our Lord
Amen.

Communion Antiphon

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of

Heaven. Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.

Prayer After Communion

Nourished by these redeeming gifts, we pray, O Lord, that

through this help to eternal salvation true faith may ever
increase. Through Christ our Lord.. Amen.
Short Homily (Mark, 6:30-34)

Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ

Todays gospel is about the discipleship that has been formatted by

Jesus Christ throughout his mission. The first thing came into my
mind, as I read this gospel is that, the apostles return from their first
missionary journey as it was instructed by Jesus to do so. They tell
Jesus, all that has happened to them, all that they did and all that they
taught. They are quite excited about the miracles they performed and
the evil spirits they exorcised. These are all about Jesus
companionship that have been offered by him to them for the greater
name of His Fathers mission to the whole world, saying, I have
come to do the will of him who sent me: go, make them all nations,
and baptize them in the name of us.

Brothers and Sisters..

Going out into the world puts us into the heart of the human
experience, like God coming into this world as man. Unless we go out
we would not know the misery that is plaguing our fellow human
beings. We might know this as a fact and we might be instructed in
the law of Love, but our knowledge of this human reality will be
nothing more than ideas. With all our comfort, we wouldnt know
what misery and suffering are. In all our abundance, we want more
and more until it ruins us as well. In short we wouldnt have known
how to love.

This is the reason why Jesus Christ has instructed his disciples to
always go out into the world to gain their knowledge about God and
how to love him with all their heart passionately. We, too, are called
to do such things in our everyday life as we offer ourselves as his
children.

May God bless us always. Amen.