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PERFECTION IN HEAVENLY TRADITION

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THE BEHEADING OF SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST 1 Cor 1:26-31; Ps 33:12-13,18-21; Mk 6:17-29 The Essence of the Heavenly Tradition The heart or core value that defines the heavenly tradition is God-centredness. The Gospel tradition teaches the supremacy of the knowledge of God the Father and love for Him. We are trained in the holy tradition to prefer the will of the Father in all things and reject our own sinful will. The training commences from the very day we encounter Jesus Christ personally and make our profession of faith in him. To make a profession of faith in Jesus Christ is to have received divine light from the Father as Peter did when he confessed the identity of the Son of Man. Hence, such enlightenment from the Father is a privileged invitation to follow Jesus Christ, the sole teacher of mankind. We sin any time we leave the light of our faith in Jesus Christ to follow our own or worldly light; to desire to do our own will and not follow the teaching of Jesus Christ is to g...
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ORDERED BY THE LOVE OF GOD

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SAINT AUGUSTINE, BISHOP, DOCTOR 1 Jn 4:7-16; Ps 119:9-14; Mt 23:8-12 You have Only One Teacher We celebrate Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose life holds so many lessons for us. In his life, we see what is required to learn and live out the heavenly tradition. He was not born a saint, but a sinner like any of us. Conceived and born in sin, he was drawn to a sinful lifestyle like ours, and he let his soul drink in vanity, becoming vain in his thoughts and life. It is always true that we become what we desire and love; for desire is love in flight to its object. By desire we conceive a thing and become one with it in loving it. Therefore, we are gradually transformed into the likeness of what we desire and love. Such is the operation of God’s image in each of us. God is in all things by his infinite and creative power, but man is all things by knowledge and love. The power to know and to love comes from God, for we understand the human intellect and will as spiritual powers. They are ...
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FORMATION IN HEAVENLY TRADITION

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SAINT MONICA 1 Cor 1:1-9; Ps 145:2-7; Mt 24:42-51 The Riches of Heavenly Tradition The true tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ is the Gospel tradition. It is a heavenly tradition because its source is God. We do not just imbibe the heavenly tradition by baptism at the profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Our baptism is rather the beginning of our inculturation into the heavenly culture and tradition. The commencement of this inculturation is not merely the ritual of baptism, but the truthful confession of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Just as we heard him say to Peter at his confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, ‘Upon this rock I will build my Church,’ our inculturation into the Gospel tradition begins with our genuine confession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The features that make our confession genuine are the acknowledgment of our sins and our nothingness without God, sincere sorrow, repentance, confession of our sins to him, and a true re...
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THE HEAVENLY TRADITION OF THE CHURCH

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WEDNESDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Thess 3:6-10,16-18; Ps 128:1-2,4-5; Mt 23:27-32 The Earthly and Heavenly Traditions What are traditions? Traditions are informally understood as the various ways of doing things and living day-to-day that we have received from our ancestors. Traditions are constituted from peoples’ customs, values, worldviews, and belief systems. They form part of a people's cultural heritage. Within every tradition we encounter the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is part of the tradition that is genuinely human and general, in the sense that it is found in every human tradition. The bad is part of the tradition that accrued from the experiences of the people which were wrongly understood and resolved; the responses to such misunderstood experiences are codified and passed to subsequent generations. The ugly aspect of traditions is made up of aberrations of our nature which are evil and results of sin and sinful attachments to demons. The ugly a...
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INTERIOR COMING OF THE GROOM

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TUESDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Thess 2:1-3,14-17; Ps 96:10-13; Mt 23:23-26 The Coming of the Bridegroom Just as we do not know God the Father because of the blindness caused by sin and due to our engrossment in the sensual things, we do not know the Son also because of our lack of faith in God’s word. The knowledge of the Father and the Son is intertwined; We know the Father when we know the Son, and we know the Son when we know the Father. But Jesus taught that nobody knows the Son except the Father, and nobody knows the Father except the Son, and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. The Father has chosen to reveal the Son to us, to invite us to his wedding feast and communion. The revelation is in spiritual form but given in sensible sacramental forms. We have received the gift of faith corresponding to the revelation of God’s Son to us. So, we noted in yesterday’s reflection that the gradual revelation of God’s glory is experienced within each of us who ...
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A SINCERE ATTENDANT TO THE BRIDEGROOM

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FEAST OF SAINT BARTHOLOMEW, APOSTLE Apo 21:9-14; Ps 145:10-13a,17-18; Jn 1:45-51 The Making of the Bride of Christ Those whom the Father has invited to the wedding banquet had no idea what awaited them at the Son of God's wedding banquet. They have no idea of what the Father has prepared for them because they lack the knowledge of the Father. It is only the Son who knows the Father and understands the nature of the banquet he prepared for his wedding. At a wedding banquet, all attention is on the bride and her groom, and so much is lavished on the bride's preparation and decoration to match and display the groom's wealth and affluence. More is expected when the groom is a prince; the king would spend lavishly on the bride. The causes of our ignorance, who are invited to the heavenly banquet, are two: the first is our total ignorance of God; the second is our blindness caused by sin and addiction to the senses. Thus, the Scripture says that what God has prepared for th...
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KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST FOR COMMUNION

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SUNDAY, TWENTY FIRST WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Isa 22:19-23; Ps 138:1-3,6,8; Rom 11:33-36; Mt 16:13-20 Our United Desire for the Communion The Church’s opening prayer for today’s Eucharistic celebration is a plea to God to grant us the desire for communion with him, which he has promised us. This is important because the desire for the life of God enables us to obey his commandments; as we noted previously in our reflections, knowledge and obedience to the Commandments of God introduce us to communion with God. Knowledge of the Commandments and our obedience to them conform our lives here on earth to the divine life. The Commandments are God’s self-revelation to us, his creatures. They constitute an invitation and open door for everyone to enter the communion of the Triune God. So, the revelation of the Commandments to Israel placed them on a pedestal higher than all the Gentile nations. Saint Paul lamented this privilege Israel received from God, but wasted, in the readings of two S...
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