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THE WOMAN COVERED BY THE MAN

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SUNDAY, THIRTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Prov 31:10-13,19-20,30-31; Ps 128:1-5; 1 Thess 5:1-6; Mt 25:14-15,19-21 The Woman who fears the Lord The concepts of man and woman carry special meaning within the Gospel message and mystical life. These meanings do not negate the gender and biological meanings suited to our physical, earthly life, but transcend them through their mystical underpinnings. The two genders have distinct roles in nature, but similar roles in spiritual or mystical life. As we turn to mystical life, the application of man and woman to a particular sex gets blurred. We blur the distinction between the sexes because everything is reordered in the household of God, the Church of Jesus Christ. God orders every soul to Jesus Christ in the economy of salvation as a bride to the heavenly bridegroom. This reordering does not set aside the ordering in the family, which is meant to mirror our heavenly communion with Jesus Christ. In the reordered economy of salvation, e...
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LIFE OF INTERIOR PRAYER

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SATURDAY, THIRTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 3 Jn 5-8; Ps 112:1-6; Lk 18:1-8 The Need for Persistence in Prayer Prayer is a vital activity of our Christian life. We need to keep praying to stay spiritually alive. Just as we cannot stop breathing in our physical life, we cannot stop praying in our spiritual life. Our spirits are hardwired to God and open up to God. Our spirits breathe in and out in God. This is what prayer actually means: awareness of God’s presence and taking in of the divine presence. Prayer is forged in that awareness of God’s presence in us. Even when our awareness is not thematic but fluid, prayer goes on deep within us before it becomes an objective operation of spiritual awareness. So, our faith in God and in Jesus Christ, his Son, who redeemed us from sin, darkness, and evil, is the foundation of prayer. Real prayer belongs to the spirit we received through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. So, real prayer is always in union with the Holy Spirit. We stated...
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THE LIFE OF TRUTH AND LOVE

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FRIDAY, THIRTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Jn 4-9; Ps 119:1-2,10-11,17-18; Lk 17:28-37 The Revelation of the Son of Man The days of the Son of Man are still with us, for Christ is still present today. As we stated yesterday, His days of physical appearance among men ended with His crucifixion on the Cross of Calvary, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. But his days are still with us, for the Son of Man is with us spiritually or mystically. Through baptism, we are made members of Jesus Christ. We receive the Holy Spirit, who gives us new life in Jesus Christ, by which we share the same life as Jesus Christ. Hence, the faithful are not eager to see his physical appearance, for we see him spiritually as living within us. By our interior walk, we grow very familiar with Jesus Christ spiritually. The devil and his evil workers cannot deceive us or cause us to be agitated by any claim to a physical representation of Jesus Christ here or there. If there is any such physical repr...
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ATTAINING HEAVENLY FREEDOM

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  SAINT JOSAPHAT, BISHOP, MARTYR Philemon 7-20; Ps 146:7-10; Lk 17:20-25 No Slave in the Kingdom of God God never created us to be slaves. He made us to be in communion with him, to share the divine life and privileges. God granted us his image from the moment of our creation and planned to make us his likeness. Lacking attention to the word of God, our first parents were deceived by the Serpent and failed to cooperate with God. They instead cooperated with the sweet-talking stranger, the Serpent. They lost their freedom and became slaves of their appetite and the devil, who corrupted them in disobedience. We all inherited this status of slavery and remained slaves through our sinful lifestyle. God came to our aid through his only Begotten Son, who died to deliver us from the bondage of the devil. When the moment was right, he offered the life of his Son to redeem us, slaves, from sin, death, and demonic oppression. He adopted us and returned us to our status as freeborn in h...
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GRATITUTE FOR GRACE OF SALVATION

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SAINT MARTIN OF TOURS, BISHOP Titus 3:1-7; Ps 23; Lk 17:11-19 Living to Praise God Learning to praise God in all situations shows advancement in Christian maturity. We start off on our Christian vocation with a mindset conditioned by our physical or natural life. We consider and judge everything from a material perspective because that is what we are used to. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ gradually starts modifying our worldview, as we meditate and pray his salvific mysteries in the liturgy and in Scripture. The more we let the Holy Spirit guide us into the deep mysteries of Jesus Christ, the more we shed our natural way of seeing and evaluating things and embrace the spiritual way. Those things that used to attract and please us before gradually lose their grip on us; and spiritual things begin to appeal more to our spirit. The means God uses to change our lifestyle from physical or natural to spiritual are usually trials and difficulties. These constitute the process of pu...
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THE JOY AND POWER OF CHRISTIAN LIFE

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SAINT LEO THE GREAT, POPE, DOCTOR Titus 2:1-8,11-14; Ps 37:3-4,18,3,27,29; Lk 18:7-10 Living the Christian Doctrine The Christian vocation is beyond our expectations. Given our fallen state and how sinful the thoughts of our minds are, and the despicable things we have loved and dedicated our lives to before now, we ought to celebrate our conversion to Jesus Christ daily. By his life, death, and resurrection, Christ has rescued us from the dominion of darkness, sin, and evil, and brought us into his wonderful light, by which we now know God as our Father. The reality the Gospel of Jesus Christ presents to us is different from the realities of our sensible world. They are divine truths hidden behind visible realities, which enlighten us on what we perceive with our senses. Only faith in Jesus Christ connects us to the spiritual realities from which spiritual goods flow to us. Since faith is our adequate response to the word of God, no one can know we truly believe the Gospel if we...
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TEMPLES FOR WORSHIP OF GOD

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FEAST OF DEDICATION OF THE LATERAN BASILICA 1 Cor 3:9-11,16-17; Ps 46:2-3,5-6,8-9; Jn 2:13-22 The Dedication of Our Temple We celebrate the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome, built by Emperor Constantine in 324 on the Lateran Hill. Rome has celebrated it since the twelfth century to mark the basilica's significance as “the mother and head of all the churches of Rome and the World.” The celebration was extended to the whole Roman Rite as a sign of unity and love towards the See of Peter, the head of the apostles. In celebrating the ancient basilica, the Church looks beyond the physical building to the reality which it signifies, the Church as the body of Jesus Christ. The dedication of the physical building is only a symbol of believers’ conversion and dedication to worship of the living God in the physical buildings and elsewhere. Physical buildings are dedicated only to mediate the consecration of our bodies and lives to God. The dedication of the physical building ...
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