Reflection from Friar Nicholas

THURSDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT    Jer 17:5-10; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 16:19-31 Our Participation in the Cup of our Lord It would be an unfair and unbalanced treatment to consider the cup of the Lord as full of only sufferings and pains, which we endure in our union with him, and not mention the surpassing sweetness and goodness that flow from the same cup. Saint Paul compared the two different contents of the cup of the Lord and judged the surpassing glory that would belong to faithful souls at the end of their journey to be incomparable to the trials they go through in this present life. Even in this present life, the faithful are not left without consolations, for the scriptures bear witness to the newness and steadfastness of God’s love every morning. Cf. Lamentations 3:22-23. Although the trials and woes of the just man are many, he is never left without the favour and grace of God. According to Saint Augustine, we often talk of trials and woes in order to prepare oursel...

WEDNESDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT    Jer 18:18-20; Ps 31:5-6,14-16; Mt 20:17-28 Our Participation in the Cup of our Lord The root cause of our sins is our lack of attention or refusal to pay attention to the Word of God, which reveals the will of the Father to us. The Word became flesh to save us from our sins and the evil that holds us bound by sin. As man, he did not just redeem us from sin and evil; he traced a path of redemption for us to follow. Assuming our nature and sinful condition, he teaches us how to return to the divinely planned communion with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This communion God prepared for us, which is the reason he made us, was in the original plan of the Father even before the foundation of the earth. By repentance, therefore, we enter into the path of transformation that ends with our full communion with the Trinity. The path entails a gradual transformation of our minds and hearts into that of Jesus Christ. It is the growth ...

TUESDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT    Isa 1:10,16-20; Ps 50:8-9,16-17,21,23; Mt 23:1-12 The Sole Teacher of Man The two readings we have today confirm that our path to being like God is a path of dialogue and learning. We have conceived the whole universe as the school of man, where we learn the rudiments of God’s truth and the rule of harmonious existence. The whole creation coming from the Father and Creator of all things is loud in proclaiming the eternal and infinite qualities of God. Everything bears the imprint of the Eternal Wisdom through whom the Father created all things. With our God-given rationality, we are supposed to follow the imprint of Wisdom in creation to the presence of God, just as a train runs on its tracks. The corruption of our rational light by the serpent through the original sin derailed man from the natural path of wisdom in creation. The nature of created things shows an intelligible track of wisdom in creation through which we can attain to God. E...

MONDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT    Dan 9:4-10; Ps 79:8-9,11,13; Lk 6:36-38 Learning to Act Like God Recall that the project the Trinity of Persons in God set out to accomplish in creating man is to make man in the image of God and to be like God. As we have come to know, the first part of the project did not pose any difficulty for God, whose infinite power can accomplish all things. But the aspect of making man to be like God involves the free will of man, which the infinite goodness of God has endowed man with. In His divine integrity, God respects the free will of man; He can only guide man through the inner light of his rational nature to act like God. We are already familiar with the story of Adam and Eve and how the serpent deceived them from the path of rationality, leading to their likeness to God. He made them desire to be like God without God’s help and grace. The story is not just a story, but the experience of each human person; for in each of us lives Adam and E...

SUNDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT    Gen 12:1-4; Ps 33:4-5,18-20,22; 2 Tim 1:8-10; Mt 17:1-9 The Transfiguration of the Son of Man We commence the second week of Lent with our attention drawn to the word of God. The word of God is everything for us in our worship of God, for the word of God is God communicated to us. Attention paid to the word of God is the core of our religious worship and relationship with God. As we have noted, the season of Lent is a fitting time to deepen our awareness of God's revelation to us, as contained in His words as recorded in the Scriptures. Our position that God created man to be His temple rests on the fact that our whole being is well illuminated only by the Eternal Word of God. In this sense, the scripture understands Jacob or the people of Israel to be the inheritance of the Word of God. “For the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage.” Deuteronomy 32:9. Jacob became the Lord’s inheritance when he received the revela...

SATURDAY, FIRST WEEK OF LENT    Deutero 26:16-19; Ps 119:1-2,4-5,7-8; Mt 5:43-48 Our Consecration to the Word In his sermon on the mount, Our Lord edited the Law of Moses, making it stricter by removing all the human considerations Moses allowed in his administration of the Law to the people of Israel. He carried out these editions on his own authority. His action came across to the Pharisees and scribes as a clear proclamation of his Godhead. The Law of Moses was held sacrosanct as expressing the mind of God; no one has the authority to change or alter any aspect of it with impunity. Our Lord’s proclamation of a new Law that supersedes the Law of Moses calls attention to his divinity. If he is divine, then we have a duty to listen and obey his words. As we have noted earlier this week, his edition of the Law is stricter and evidently impossible for our fallen nature to keep. But we must not make any mistake on the nature of the word of God; both in the Old Testament and...