General. In today's Eucharistic liturgy, the Christian shows his happiness in being fully united with Christ whom he always wants to serve as Son of God and elder brother. With this spirit in him, the Christian exits the Liturgy with the fulness of the Gospel which he now wants to spread worldwide, to faithful and pagans alike, for the salvation of all those who believe.

Proverbs. The writer sings the lauds of a worthy woman who pursues her vocation of saintly womanhood and fulfils her role as housewife. She is supportive from her own home to the economic activities of her husband, while she helps the needy and does not fall to the wiles of vanity. In short, she is the woman who uses her talents well.

Psalm. The secret of living happily is that of the fear of the Lord, which means the fear that one loses His all-embracing love. It reminds us of a child who regrets having seen his father angry with him and wants to recoup that love by all means and charms. Happy is the man who walks the path of the Lord and does not shudder to work for the family to which he is a good husband, literally to which he is house-bound.

First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The days are getting darker now and the Church tends to remind us, about this time of the year, of the last days to come. They will come for one and all together (even though we have been receiving messages of collective catastrophe all year long) and by analogy, individually. So we should keep watch, day and night, while keeping sobre (especially during the night) as sons of the Light, who is Christ.

St Matthew. The theme of darkness crops up again in the last verse: he who has not used his talent well is thrown out in the darkness where there is no hope. Such man would have misinterpreted the gift of the Holy Spirit of having fear of the Lord, and would have lived an easy-going life just thinking of sticking to his comfortable faith without doing any tangible good works. He instead fears he might go wrong somewhere, sometime and this would hurt his pride, so he would rather prefer not to do anything at all. God looks for the fruit coming out of good works, and then judges mercifully on the merits due to each one for one's efforts.

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