In today’s First Reading the Lord describes his relationship with Israel like that of a father\u00a0toward his son. In the imagery Hosea uses we can imagine the Lord holding the infant Israel in his arms, and then standing behind\u00a0Israel as a toddler taking his first wobbly steps. Just as a toddler Israel, even in his father’s arms, seemed oblivious to his father as he explores the new world around him, or, once he could\u00a0walk, goes running off without any thought for danger.\u00a0Israel became oblivious to the Lord who loved him as a father and often ran into danger with no regard.<\/p>\n
The First Reading’s prophecy was a foreshadowing of the real relationship the Lord wanted to have with us: a Father loving his children no matter how they loved him in return. He comes as the Son to enable us to become his brothers and sisters and to become adopted children of God. Unfortunately we sometimes act just like Israel in today’s First Reading: oblivious to all the love he has shown us and often fleeing him into the very danger of soul from which he wants to protect\u00a0us.<\/p>\n
Let’s ask Our Lord today for a renewed awareness of the love Our Heavenly Father shows us every day, so that we let him lead us.<\/p>\n
Readings:\u00a0Hosea 11:1\u20134, 8e\u20139;\u00a0Psalm 80:2ac, 3b, 15\u201316;\u00a0Matthew 10:7\u201315.<\/em>\u00a0See also 1st Week of Advent, Saturday<\/a>,\u00a015th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B<\/a>,\u00a025th Week in Ordinary Time, Wednesday<\/a>, Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus<\/a>, and\u00a014th Week In Ordinary Time, Thursday<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In today’s First Reading the Lord describes his relationship with Israel like that of a father\u00a0toward his son. In the imagery Hosea uses we can imagine the Lord holding the infant Israel in his arms, and then standing behind\u00a0Israel as a toddler taking his first wobbly steps. Just as a toddler Israel, even in his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[60,45,10,146],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fourteenth-week","tag-ordinary-time","tag-thursday","tag-year-ii"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p65qtw-nJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1473,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fathernikola.org\/liturgy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}