Our Lady of Mount Carmel 

＊＊＊ 1st Reading ＊＊＊

Isaiah 26:7-9, 11, 16-19

 Let the righteous walk in right­eousness.

You make smooth the path of the just, and we only seek the way of your laws, O Yahweh. Your name and your memory are the desire of our hearts. My soul yearns for you in the night; for you my spirit keeps vigil.

When your judgments come to earth, the world’s inhabitants learn to be upright. Yahweh, your hand is lifted up, but they fail to see that. Let them see your zeal for your people, that they may be put to shame. Let your enemies be burned in the fire of your anger.

For they sought you in distress, they cried out to you in the time of their punishment. As a woman in travail moans and writhes in pain, so are we now in your presence.

 We conceived, we had labor pains, but we gave birth to the wind. We have not brought salvation to the land; the inhabitants of a new world have not been born.

 Your dead will live! Their corpses will rise! Awake and sing, you who lie in the dust! For you will grow like plants drenched with the morning dew, and athe earth will bring forth its dead spirits.

 

Ps 102:13-14ab & 15, 16-18, 19-21

From heaven the Lord looks down on the earth.

 

＊＊＊＊ Gospel ＊＊＊＊

Matthew 11:28-30

 Come to me, all you who work hard and who carry heavy burdens and I will refresh you.  Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart; and you will find rest. For my yoke is good and my burden is light.”

 

Gospel Reflection：

A friend has been buying properties to have different resting places after each heavy day of work. His family is in Europe and he does not like it there. He owns condominium units, a duplex, and a five-bed-room subdivision house. Yet he still checks in to hotels feeling so homeless and restless. He was once invited to a birthday party held in the celebrant’s one-bedroom condo. He arrived first to the place and felt the tightness of space in the nuit. Then the celebrant’s wife cheerfully came out of the bedroom. His four children greeted him as if they knew him for long. He suddenly felt the space getting bigger and bigger with the family’s shared joy and laughter. When the party was over, he did not know where to go home to. The resting place he needs, after all, is not a residential unit-persons and loved ones.