Reflection from Friar Nicholas

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 Give, and there will be Gifts for You The humanly impossible religious demands our Lord Jesus Christ makes of us set Christianity apart from other human- or earth-originated religions. The divine precept to give without reservation is another way of demanding that we be perfect like our heavenly Father. The Son of Man did not just make the demand on us by mere words; he lived out the demand of love. The precept of charity is impossible with human strength or natural resources; thus, the Lord states that salvation is impossible from a human point of view and strength. But it is possible from God’s point of view. Hence, the demand to love all, friends and enemies, is another way to demand that we focus on God and not on creatures. To love as the Lord demands, we must never focus on the persons, but on God and his love for us. Our interior focus on God, as revealed to us by Jesus Chris...

WEDNESDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 7:25-31; Ps 45:11-12,14-17; Lk 6:20-26 Happy are You who are Poor We have identified ‘self’ as the usual mask of the evil one, which he uses to enter our souls to steal, kill, and destroy. To do this, he makes us focus on what we possess, whether physical or spiritual gifts. Once we focus on ourselves and these divine gifts, it becomes easy for him to stir pride in us. Hence, Saint Paul asked the Corinthians a fundamental question: “What do you have that is not given to you? If it is given, why boast about it?” When we boast of anything we possess, we have already lost God, the giver of the gift. If our attention is on God in Jesus Christ, then we will boast in God, in what he does in us and through us. We boast in the Lord only when our attention is solely on him, and we understand that we are nothing without God. Awareness of ourselves as nothing before God is the groundwork for solid spiritual life. The spiritual Fathers call...

FEAST OF THE BIRTHDAY OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Rom 8:28-30; Ps 13:6-7; Mt 1:1-16,18-23 She was found to be with Child We celebrate the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary's birth. As in all our celebration and veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we rejoice exceedingly in the fulfilment of God’s loving promise to mankind. As the Scripture reveals, the promise of the woman is the original promise God made to the fallen man and woman. Though the promise came with that of her Offspring, which preceded the promise of the woman in principle, the promise of the woman ranks first in time and as pertains to our living condition. Though she is nothing without her Son, she is the beginning of the new dispensation of grace, for which all the ages of men hope. She is the beginning of a new world without sin and any allegiance to the devil. Because she is the principle or beginning of the world of grace, she is the mother of all the redeemed. Her birth is the birth or actualisation of th...

MONDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 5:1-8; Ps 5:5-7,12; Lk 6:6-11 False Attention on Jesus Christ Saint Paul finally hits the nail on the head. He mentions the root cause of the community's ills and problems at Corinth: self-conceit, or pride. This is the root of every vice that grows in our lives. According to Saint Augustine, pride is such an evil and dangerous thing that, while other vices will need a sinful habitat to germinate and grow, pride can germinate and thrive amidst virtues. Who would think that the partisan spirit in the Corinthian community is rooted in pride and self-exaltation? But Paul traced it to pride. “The pride that you take in yourselves is hardly to your credit. You must know how even a small amount of yeast is enough to leaven all the dough, so get rid of all the old yeast, and make yourselves into a completely new batch of bread, unleavened as you are meant to be.” The symbol of yeast is so apt here for what pride does in our spiritual ...

SUNDAY, TWENTY THIRD WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Ezek 33:7-9; Ps 95:1-2,6-9; Rom 13:8-10; Mt 18:15-20 Our Love for Neighbour Our Lord teaches us in the scriptures that the greatest of all the Commandments is to love God with all our heart, mind, and strength. Since the first object of our love conditions our whole love, life, and behaviour, it follows that our love for God is supposed to direct the whole of our Christian life and doings. Furthermore, since love makes the beloved live in the lover, we can actually say that God lives and acts through a Christian who has matured in the precept of love. Again, since the love of God is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, this implies that the Holy Spirit dwells more and becomes more active in our lives as we grow in our Christian or spiritual life. Based on this, we have understood our spiritual life as a progressive interior walk into the mysteries of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord. It is true to say that God lives in ...

SATURDAY, TWENTY SECOND WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 4:6-15; Ps 145:17-21; Lk 6:1-5 Safeguarding the Divine Mysteries As stewards entrusted with the divine mysteries, we are required to safeguard them against thieves and brigands, understand them, and pass them on intact to others. The most important task in safeguarding the heavenly mysteries we have received is carried out through the virtue of humility. This heavenly virtue is so important for the reception and safekeeping of heavenly blessings that the Church puts it forward as the principal virtue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. God adorned her with this virtue in a special way to enable her to play the unique role of the mother of Jesus Christ, who is God and blessed forever. Endowed with profound humility, she stood empty of anything that could hinder her reception of the Eternal Word of God, contained Him, and delivered Him safely for the whole humanity. Another reason for the greatness of this virtue in the Blessed Virgin Mar...