General. This Sunday we have to face up to reality – that there is no more playing around about being Christian and what it really means. Having been baptised means we have given up our lives to Christ, since we have received God’s light and become sons of light as God’s adopted children. So sin should no longer be on our agenda but we should rather seek the light of God’s truth which pervades the darkness of wrongdoing.

Second Book of Kings. The hospitality afforded to visitors has always been a hallmark of Christian life. God recompenses whoever is hospitable to His people, hearing their prayers and awarding them a hundredfold for their doings. Similarly, the same reward is given to those nations which accept the Church as their moral force and attribute to it high status within the leading hierarchy.

Epistle to the Romans. St Paul delves into the meaning of baptism with water. For Jews, water means destruction (the deluge, the Red Sea, Jonah) and for Christians it was only santified after Christ descended into it in his baptism in the Jordan and cast the Leviathan out of it. Entering the waters of baptism means death with Christ and consequent resurrection. Death to worldly life means death to sin and living for the Father.

St Matthew. Jesus expects a full commitment towards him and the Father. Anything which we do in their name obtains an equally merited recompense in this life and hereafter. Yet most important of all is to be able to bear one’s own cross. Jesus lays this burthen upon us as a sign of his Father’s love for us. The Christian cannot make it to eternal life without embracing his own individual cross and it is only through it that he obtains salvation. That is why during the Good Friday Adoration of the Cross it is important to kiss the wood of the cross, not so much the body on it, as this reminds that as Jesus had his own cross so does the individual Christian have his own specific cross (life events) which also he should embrace.

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