Presider: Fr. Arul Ponnaiyan Parish: St. Paul & Sacred Heart
Choir: St. Anthony on the Lake
TEXT FROM THE GOSPEL AND HOMILY
The Lord be with you. And with your spirit
A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you o Lord
Jesus said to his disciples: "Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master's return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way, blessed are those servants. Be sure of this: if the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared for an hour you do not expect, the son of man will come."
The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.
I come from India and I grew up hearing a lot of stories about Saint Mother Theresa. She's like my sweetheart. I had an opportunity to work with the sisters of mother Theresa. As I came to know all the sisters in the convent, each one of them for me was like another Mother Theresa. Their charisma, how their faces beam with joy in serving the people that are most vulnerable. This is what I love about Mother Theresa, she said that all the people that she served were Jesus in disguise and then you hear from the people that, who had the privilege of being served by Mother Theresa, tell us that she was the face of God to them. What a great insight and spiritual wisdom and for me that was life changing, working with the Mother Theresa sisters and hearing the stories of how Mother Theresa put herself at the service of the poorest of the poor. And in her graveyard from Matthew's chapter 25 verse 40, “Whatsoever you do to the least of your brothers and sisters you do unto me.” that last verse, you do unto me, is inscribed. And that's what she did, she did whatever she did to the people, that she was doing to God. And in the gospels we often hear from Jesus talk to us about the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God is always about relationship. It's a network of relationships, our relationship with God and our relationship with one another. And in this relationship Jesus always, the kingdom message is always, there is a sense of urgency, here and now. Be vigilant and ready, so for us being vigilant and ready for the coming of God's kingdom means, it's an invitation to all of us to be attentive to the needs of those who are least among us. To grow in our awareness of the needs of the people in our families in our communities and in our nation and beyond so that's what it means to be vigilant, to be ready for the coming of God's kingdom. So I invite all of us to take a moment to see and reflect who are those that are least among us, maybe in our own families and in our communities, also people that are homeless, people that are poor, people who are incarcerated, people in our neighborhood who are lonely, who are sick, who are homebound. People that are coming into this country as refugees, people who are already here undocumented, I believe that those are the people that are least among us and if we open our hearts to them, welcoming them and be a source of if we learn to grow in our awareness of the needs of those people and reach out to them and attend to their needs, then we will be called blessed, as Jesus says in the gospel. Blessed are those servants who are vigilant in the coming of their master's arrival.
Entrance: Enter the Journey
Text and music © 2000 Mark Friedman and Janet Vogt. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.
Psalm: Blessed, blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
The English translation of the Psalm Response from the Lectionary for Mass © 1969, 1981, 1997 International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved. Music Copyright © 2013 by GIA publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Preparation: The Servant Song
© 1977 Scripture in Song. All rights reserved. Used with permission
Communion: Be Strong in the Lord
Copyright © 2013 by GIA Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Sending Forth: I Sing the Mighty Power of God
Text: Isaac Watts, 1674-1748, alt.
Tune: MOZART, CMD; adapt. from Wolfgang A. Mozart, 1756-1791
Mass Setting: Mass of Renewal
Text © 2010, ICEL. All rights reserved. Used with permission. Music © 2009, Curtis Stephan. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.
Permission to podcast/stream the music in this liturgy obtained from ONE LICENSE, License No. A-718591.
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