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RESPONDING TO GOD'S DEVOTION

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WEDNESDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF LENT Dan 3:14-20,24-25,28; Dan 3:52-56; Jn 8:31-42 The Colour of Devotion to God To make a habit of living a holy life we must develop a devotion to the word of God by gladly listening, fervently meditating, and joyfully contemplating God in his word daily. Devotion can be described as the presence of the object of our love in our everyday activities. St. Francis de Sales uses conjugal love to explain the meaning of devotion and how it works. The devotion between spouses who are in love is that presence and sweetness of the love of the other spouse, which enters into every activity of the day, making it less burdensome. When the object of our love takes a firm grip on our hearts and modifies how we see and carry out every task of the day, we say we are devoted to such an object or person. The goal of the Christian life is this devotion. We are to love God with all our minds, hearts, and strength. In other words, we should be committed to God’s word and pr...
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RECOGNISING THE GOD WITH US

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TUESDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF LENT Numb 21:4-9; Ps 102:2-3,16-21; Jn 8:21-30 The Lifting up of the Son of Man We must remember that the paschal mysteries are divine-human contents forged in the fire of divine love. So, only faith working with love unlocks their salvific benefits. As the scriptures witness, God is love, and those who come to have communion with him must not only believe but also allow themselves to fall in love with the divine works. On this basis, Moses communicated the great Shema to Israel, an invitation to Israelites to love their God, with all their hearts, minds, and strength. The importance of this call lies in the fact that only love understands the language of love. Many marriage unions fail because a spouse fails to understand the love language of the other. Love meanings are lost, and communication breaks down between spouses. They fail to achieve communion in marriage due to the failure of proper communication. Israel was married to Yahweh in the covenant t...
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LOVE OF GOD KEEPS THE LAW

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MONDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF LENT Dan 13:1-9,15-17,19-30,33-62; Ps 23; Jn 8:12-20 Passing to Newness of Life The Book of Daniel the prophet gives us a fascinating story of an event that happened while the Israelites were in captivity in Babylon. Susanna, the daughter of Hilkiah, is the central character of the story, a woman described as beautiful both within and without. “In Babylon, there lived a man named Joachim. He had married Susanna daughter of Hilkiah, a woman of great beauty; and she was God-fearing, because her parents were worthy people and had instructed their daughter in the Law of Moses.” Her external beauty would be nothing without her inner beauty, so the scripture praises her parents for bringing her up in the Law of Moses. From the story, we understand the importance of the Law as a passage from former or old life to newness of life in God. By instructing their daughter in the Law of God, her parents introduced her to the immortal life of God. Hence, the Law was a mean...
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LOVE REVEALED IN THE PASCHAL MYSTERIES

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FIFTH SUNDAY OF LENT Isa 43:16-21; Ps 126; Phil 3:8-14; Jn 8:1-11 The Supreme Advantage of knowing Jesus Christ We ended last week’s reflections on the theme of Devotion to Paschal Mysteries on the note of a deeper understanding of the human-divine origin of the paschal mysteries. We consider the love-foundation of the paschal mysteries. God created the world out of love and redeemed it with the same love. The mystery of God’s love for man is our theme this week. God’s love for his creatures, especially his love for us men, prompts him to devise new ways and methods of coming to our aid in our misery caused by our blindness and ignorance of his love. He recalled the old wonders he worked for the salvation of his people through the prophet Isaiah. “Thus says the Lord, who made a way through the sea, a path in the great waters; who put chariots and horse in the field and a powerful army which lay there never to rise again, snuffed out, put out like a wick.” These incredible works o...
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CHRIST DIES IN EVERY JUST MAN

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SATURDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT Jer 11:18-20; Ps 7:2-3,9-12; Jn 7:40-52 Christ in Us, the Hope of Glory The paschal mysteries, which we have explained as the mystery of Jesus Christ, are indeed profound. They draw from the very depth of God’s will, which is an unfathomable abyss of goodness for us. Because God is our creator, his intention for making us sits deep within each person he created as the source of our being. Because he made us for himself, there is a deep yearning for God within us, which no creature can ever satisfy. On the other hand, erected within the consciousness of sinful man, is a tendency to self. The tendency is a negative or corrupted desire for God that turns to seek self in place of God. It is a device of the evil one, who erected this false god in the consciousness of man by casting doubt on the word of God, thereby closing the entrance of the word of God into the human soul. The conflict between these two centres of desire in us characterises the paschal ...
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THE ORIGIN OF THE SON OF MAN AND THE MYSTERIES

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FRIDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT Wis 2:1,12-22; Ps 34:16,18,19-21,23; Jn 7:1-2,10,25-30 The Meaning of Paschal Mysteries The sin-induced conflict between the immutable will of God and the human wills and desires is the root of the paschal mysteries. In other words, they come about from the conflict between the light of God and the darkness of sin and evil, between the Truth of God and human ignorance and demonic lies. The paschal mysteries are of Christ's events, but they resonate in the life of every human person. Thus, it connects back to the very fall of man and woman in the Garden of Eden. It is born of the seed of discord sown in the human heart by the evil one, which is propagated daily by our choices. So, the paschal mysteries are within us who turn to God in faith. The Book of Wisdom puts the source of the paschal mysteries as the misconceptions rife in human sinful hearts in opposition to God’s truth. “The godless say to themselves, with their misguided reasoning: ‘Our li...
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THE EFFICACY OF THE PASCHAL MYSTERIES

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THURSDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT Exod 32:7-14; Ps 106:19-23; Jn 5:31-47 The Father’s Witness to the Son We have reflected on the fact that the Son reveals the Father through his life, death, and resurrection. The core of these revelations is the content of the paschal mysteries. By the paschal mysteries through which he sacrificed or consecrated himself to the Father to accomplish his will, he showed forth the holiness of God and revealed the essence of his sacred name: ‘I Am who I Am.’ Through the same paschal mysteries, he forgave our sins and achieved the eternal redemption of all who would call on God’s holy name for salvation. The paschal mysteries have profound significance for us who seek to know God and receive salvation from sin and evil. Its importance is such that the scriptures lose their meaning when we remove these mysteries of our Lord. The words of our Lord in the gospel affirm this. “You study the scriptures, believing that in them you have eternal life; now these same sc...
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