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THE ROOT OF PRAYER

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SUNDAY, THIRTIETH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Eccl 35:12-14,16-19; Ps 34:2-3,17-19,23; 2 Tim 4:6-8,16-18; Lk 18:9-14 Prayer forged in the Ashes of Humility From our reflection on the grace of God last week, during which we understood grace to mean the presence of God given to us to accomplish His holy will, we take up prayer as the corresponding response to God’s grace in our lives. The grace of God causes prayer in us, as our adequate response and cooperation to God’s gift of Himself. As we noted earlier in our reflection, every grace comes to us first as a prevenient grace, enabling us to cooperate with God’s will and domesticate it within us as actual grace in realising the divine will for us. Prayer is the desire for actual grace for the accomplishment of the divine will that is revealed to us. The divine will for our salvation, which is Jesus Christ, produces a pure spirit within us, essentially a pure desire for the knowledge of the Father and the doing of His holy will. The new ...
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THE NECESSITY OF GRACE FOR SALVATION

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SATURDAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 8:1-11; Ps 24:1-6; Lk 13:1-9 The Cost of Ignoring Grace of Jesus Christ Grace is the presence of God with us to accomplish his holy will. We have repeatedly stated this very important truth, that it may sink deeply into us. It is a central truth of our salvation because not understanding the presence of God with us exposes us to the manipulations and snares of demons and evil people. However, knowing the signs that indicate the presence of God with us helps us to attend to His presence and be secure in our willing and doings. To live in the regime of grace is to be aware of the presence of Jesus Christ with us always. His presence is no longer given to the senses, but in mysteries. But every event and circumstance of our lives is an indicator or a sign of his abiding presence. The awareness of his presence is prayer and characterises the interior life for us. Our continuous struggle to be aware of this presence is the struggle for ...
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HUMAN NATURE AND GRACE

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FRIDAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 7:18-25; Ps 119:66,68,76-77,93-94; Lk 12:54-59 Differentiating Nature and Grace The purpose of our struggles with keeping the commandments and receiving the answers to our prayers is to bring us to the regime of grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. They are part of our spiritual birth pangs, signifying that Christ is being born in us. Human understanding and feeling cannot easily comprehend the difference between what is accomplished by our human nature and what is accomplished by grace. To a casual observer, the two would pass as the same. But the one who experiences the working of grace knows better the difference between the two. Grace accomplishes what is impossible for nature. In other words, grace achieves what is supernatural to nature and also elevates what is natural to our nature to a supernatural level. By this, we mean that those things we ordinarily accomplish by our natural strength or skill are elevated to the...
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THE REGIME OF GRACE

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THURSDAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 6:19-23; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 12:49-53 The Division caused by Grace A structure is always at work within us at any point in time. It may be the structure of sin, which is innate in us, or the structure of righteousness, which comes with the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We were born with the structure of sin, which works well with our lives through the senses. The fall of Adam and Eve was their choice to walk the path of knowledge of good and evil, which involves the experience of death. They lost the guidance of divine light or grace, which is incompatible with their choice. Their choice implies guiding themselves by the light of their own reason. Since the human reason can only gain knowledge by walking the path of physical creation, the senses define their route to knowledge of good and evil. The structure of sin arises in us through our habituation to self and ignorance of what is truly good for us. Deceived by the forces of evil, ...
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AWARENESS OF JESUS CHRIST IN GRACE

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SAINT JOHN PAUL II, POPE Rom 6:12-18; Ps 124; Lk 12:39-48 The Coming of Christ in Grace Our Lord asked his disciples to pray for the grace to stand before the Son of Man when he appears in glory. But we know that standing before the Son of Man when he appears in glory will not be a problem for us if we are now standing before him in grace. What does it mean to stand before the Son of Man in grace? The standing here has the same meaning as the standing of the angels before the One of great age in the vision of the prophet Daniel. It is a spiritual standing that denotes eagerness to receive God’s revelation and to carry it out immediately. The angels are spiritual beings with no physical form to stand on. They are said to stand before God when they wait on him to receive the revelation of his will. The same applies to us when we wait on Jesus Christ to understand God’s will for us. Because Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the revelation of the Father comes from him to both angels an...
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THE STRUCTURE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

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TUESDAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 5:12,15,17-21; Ps 40:7-10,17; Lk 12:35-38 Readiness for Grace from Jesus Christ Just as by our natural birth we all participate or inherit the original sin of Adam and Eve, and the proneness to sin, which is disobedience to God’s will, by our spiritual rebirth through the salvific work of Jesus Christ, we participate in the grace won by the perfect obedience of the Son of Man. As we have stated in our previous reflection, God’s abiding presence was connatural to his creatures before the fall of Adam and Eve. God’s grace was not lacking to them for their growth in knowledge and development of God’s likeness before they chose the way of death. Their choice to know death and walk the path of darkness, deprived them of the grace of God, as God forewarned them. They and their progenies enjoyed a minimal presence of grace. They eked out their livelihood through a cursed earth that yielded thorns and brambles in place of good fruits enhanc...
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POSSESSION AND SECURITY

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MON DAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 4:20-25; Lk 1:69-75; Lk 132:13-21 Desiring the Right Blessings Prayer is basically the desire for God. Although the desire manifests in different forms at various times and stages of our journey toward God. Because the original sin we inherited from Adam and the actual sins we committed against God gave us an orientation to creatures, in place of the original orientation of man to God, our spiritual journey entails the purification of our desire and refinement of our opinion about God. God attracts us by satisfying our bodily desires, but the indulgence of our sensible desires is only a sign of the deeper spiritual satisfaction He wants us to desire and enjoy. Thus, when our Lord wetted the appetite of the five thousand that he fed with five loaves and two fish, he presented his body and blood as the real food and drink they should longed for. Therefore, our spiritual journey and experience of prayer go through this purification, th...
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