Reflection from Friar Nicholas

FEAST OF OUR LADY, MOTHER OF AFRICA    Acts 1:12-14; Lk 1:46-55; Lk 1:26-38  The Source of Peace and Harmony The Church in Africa sets aside this last day of April to celebrate the feast of Our Lady, the Mother of Africa. As we celebrate the feast, we reflect on the situation of Africa as a continent. Remembering various parts of Africa that are still engrossed in war, poverty, hunger, diseases, and civil unrest. All these maladies are due to human sins and greed. A large population of people in many nations of Africa suffer and die daily because the few who control their wealth and power do not know how to use them to make the lives of their people better. We suffer many personal and social evils because we have failed to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ wholeheartedly. Many who enter the Church or profess Christianity do so for their own personal gains and not to truly serve God and do his will. As we noted in our previous reflection, the source of sin and evil ...

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA, VIRGIN, DOCTOR    1 Jn 1:5-2:2; Ps 103:1-4,8-9,13-14,17-18; Mt 11:25-30  The Knowledge of the Father The Son of God took our human nature to make known to us the goodness of the Father, which is hidden from us. The goodness of God the Father seems hidden to us because of our sins. Sin has turned our minds and hearts away from God and fixated them on the earth and the passing things of this world. As Saint John informed us in his first letter, familiarity or friendship with the world is enmity with God. Cf. 1 Jn 3:15. The goodness of God is always visible everywhere to those with spiritual eyes; it is only invisible to carnal eyes. Thus, the coming of the Son of God in human nature is to reveal the goodness of the Father to all in a more concrete way. The central revelation of the Son of Man is the revelation of God as our heavenly Father. By purifying us of sin through his death and giving us a new birth by his resurrection, he has given us ...

SAINT LOUIS MARIE GRINION DE MONTFORT, PRIEST    Acts 11:19-26; Ps 87; Jn 10:22-30 The Joy of Redemption The Jewish converts to faith in Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, initially did not comprehend the depth of the mysteries of the Lord. In fact, none of us fully comprehends these mysteries, which await the beatific vision for their full comprehension. Not understanding that the Good News of the Lord’s resurrection is meant for the whole world, they restricted their preaching to the Jews. Even the apostles were not clear on this aspect. They had some Gentile converts in their preaching ministry in Jerusalem, but probably thought that they were exceptions made by God for what he meant for the Jews. They may have misinterpreted the Lord’s intentional restriction of his preaching to a Jewish audience during his earthly ministry. But that was in fulfilment of the scriptures foretelling the rejection and killing of the Son of Man by the Jews. Their betrayal was meant to liberat...

MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 11:1-18; Ps 42:2-3,43:3-4; Jn 10:11-18 I Am the Good Shepherd The Son of Man, in his discourse on the Good Shepherd, presents himself as the Shepherd of mankind and not just of the Jewish race. Hence, he called himself the gate of the sheepfold. He gives life to all men and enlightens every man that comes to existence, as Saint John informs us in the prologue to the Gospel. He is the gate of the sheepfold, for he is the model of our human nature. He is acclaimed as the perfect image of the Father. As the model, no one can understand human nature without passing through the Son of Man, for in him our nature is perfect. The perfection of human nature, which is found in him, and the pure illumination of our nature in him, make him the Shepherd of all. So, all men are contained in his fold by the default of their nature. Whoever is found to be outside of the fold puts himself outside by his disobedience of the Shepherd’s voice. ...

SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 2:14,36-41; Ps 23; 1 Pet 2:20-25; Jn 10:1-10 I Am the Gate of the Sheepfold We celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter as the Good Shepherd Sunday. By this celebration, the Church leads us deeper into the Messianic role of the Son of Man. The Eternal Word assumed our human nature in order to save us from sin, death, and evil, and to restore us to the eternal dwelling that God prepared for us. This is the core content of the celebration. The celebration presents this content using the analogy of the Shepherd and the sheep. The illumination of this analogy is important for our understanding of the celebration. The fact that we are rational creatures of God makes us his own in every ramification. Though he made us rational, we are conceived and born in ignorance of God and the divine truths necessary for our eternal well-being. The disobedience of our first parents placed additional stumbling blocks or difficulties on our path to acqu...

FEAST OF SAINT MARK, EVANGELIST    Pet 5:5-14; Ps 89:2-3,6-7,16-17; Mk 16:15-20 Vocation to feed the People with Jesus Christ Remaining spiritually young and agile depends on what we feed our spirits. Since the maintenance of a thing of nature usually comes from the same principle that gave it existence, the word of God that gave us spiritual life also sustains it. We obtained spiritual life through believing in the resurrection of the Son of Man, which we confessed at our baptism. The same confession of faith in the Risen Lord makes us grow in our spiritual life. This confession of faith in the resurrection of the Lord is ritually expressed when we receive the Lord in the Eucharist. Our reception of the Sacrament of his body and blood, includes his soul and divinity. We can receive the Sacrament, the bread and wine, without faith, but the reality of his body and blood, his soul and divinity we definitely cannot receive without faith. If, therefore, we believe in hi...