Reflection from Friar Nicholas

SAINTS CORNELIUS, POPE, AND CYPRIAN, BISHOP, MARTYRS 1 Cor 11:17-26,33; Ps 40:7-10,17; Lk 7:1-10 Faith and Tradition from the Lord The two questions our Lord put to his disciples in yesterday's gospel helped us to understand and see the difference between what the people are saying about the identity of Jesus Christ and what ought to be our knowledge of him. We can also make the same distinction between the tradition that came to us and our actual understanding of the tradition and our practice of it. The disparity between these two is what St. Paul attempts to point out and correct in the first reading. He found the practice of the Eucharistic communion in the Corinthian community in total divergence from what he received from the apostolic tradition and passed on to them. “The point is, when you hold meetings, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you are eating, since when the time comes to eat, everyone is in such a hurry to start his own supper that one person goes hungry whi

SUNDAY, TWENTY FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Isa 50:5-9; Ps 116:1-6,8-9; James 2:14-18; Mk 8:27-35 Who do you say I am? Our Lord puts an important question to his disciples in the gospel. By extension, the question is also directed to each of us. The first question is about the people's perception of him. “Who do people say I am?” Our Lord understands that our views about things are mostly shaped by those around us. What we believe about Jesus Christ and the way we relate to him are informed by what we hear from people and see people do around us. Our prayer life, for example, is usually shaped by the prayer life of people around us. So, our lives are shaped to conform to the way of the people around us. There is nothing wrong with this, for all of us grew up in a culture. Culture is the way of life of a people about their reality. We must not live on the general view and cultural life, but each of us must validate and authenticate what we have received to build a personal und

THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS Numb 21:4-9; Ps 78:1-2,34-38; Jn 3:13-17 The Cross and the Mystery of Jesus Christ The holy Cross of Jesus Christ is part and parcel of the mystery of Jesus Christ. Hence, we celebrate the feast of the exaltation of the Holy Cross as an opportunity to highlight this constitutive aspect of the salvation Jesus Christ won for us. When we speak of a cross, we refer to everything unpleasant to our human nature, which, therefore, forms part of the punishment that comes to our human nature for our sins against God’s infinite goodness. It follows that suffering, as a cross, entered into human history at the very moment of the fall of our first parents Adam and Eve. Taking the testimony of the word of God in the book of Genesis, God decreed sufferings, pains, and death as a punishment for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden when they listened to the voice of the tempter in disobedience to the word of God. We locate the objective cause of human crosses in si

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, BISHOP, DOCTOR 1 Cor 9:16-19,22-27; Ps 84:3-6,12; Lk 6:39-42 Focussing on the Prize The analogy of competitors in a game is what St. Paul put before us today to illustrate our Christian duty of living the Gospel. The passage makes it clear that as attendants to the bridegroom, we have the only option of graduating to brides in our Christian vocation. As he had already warned us of our limited time to achieve this expected perfection, he pressed the message home with today's message. The Gospel preaching is a duty we must take up and is not optional. “I do not boast of preaching the gospel, since it is a duty which has been laid on me; I should be punished if I did not preach it! If I had chosen this work myself, I might have been paid for it, but as I have not, it is a responsibility which has been put into my hands.” It is a commitment to the life of God that we must live and make progress in living every day. To be negligent about our most important dut

THURSDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 8:1-7,11-13; Ps 139:1-3,13-14,23-24; Lk 6:27-38 Becoming Sons of the Most High The Gospel living is a heavenly lifestyle that cannot be initiated or imitated by our fallen human nature or evil spirits. This statement conforms with our Lord’s statement that salvation is impossible to human nature and beyond any other nature outside the divine. Based on this, we have insisted that the new life that commences in us at our commitment to the word of God is a sharing in the life of God. If God had not given us the gift of divine life, it would have been superfluous for our Lord to urge us to be perfect as our heavenly Father. Even more, he would not call God the Father our heavenly Father in this unique and restricted sense he used in the Gospel passage today. “Instead, love your enemies and do good, and lend without any hope of return. You will have a great reward, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the u

WEDNESDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 7:25-31; Ps 45:11-12,14-17; Lk 6:20-26 The Passage of Time and our Marriage to the Lord When the Pharisees and scribes challenged our Lord on the fact that his disciples were not fasting and praying as they and the disciples of John the Baptist were doing, he gave them an answer that we can understand only in the light of the mystery of Christ and his Gospel. St. Paul’s consideration of the celibate option for the Christians throws much light on the Lord’s response to the Pharisees and scribes. Our conversion to Jesus Christ should colour every other engagement in this life. According to Paul, the major focus of our attention must be Jesus Christ. Because of this primary and defining vocation of a Christian, our Lord compared his disciples to attendants to the bridegroom. We are to attend to Jesus Christ, the word of God, first before anything else. Based on this bounden duty, Paul encouraged any Christian man or woman to opt fo