Reflection from Friar Nicholas

THURSDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 22:30,23:6-11; Ps 16:1-2,5,7-11; Jn 17:20-26 The Spirit of Understanding We arrive at truth through understanding, and truths offer us knowledge. The gift of understanding by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual support to our intellect, enabling us to grasp the mysteries of God and receive divine illumination on the things and events of life. The spiritual gift of understanding is key to our easy and successful journey into the mysteries of Jesus Christ. Our journey to the mountain of God is not a physical journey, like Elijah’s journey to Mount Sinai, but a spiritual journey into the mysteries of Jesus Christ. The gift of spiritual understanding enables us to penetrate the mysteries of God, human affairs, and situations. This gift, in a special way, renews the image of God in us, for it quickens the working of our rational faculty to see beyond the physical, to the foundations of things in God’s will. We must maintain purity ...

WEDNESDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 20:28-38; Ps 68:29-30,33-36; Jn 17:11-19 The Spirit of Wisdom The Christian vocation is to inherit a kingdom. As contained in the scriptures, we are called to inherit God through Jesus Christ. Thus, sharing the same Spirit with Jesus Christ, we are to reign with him in the kingdom of his Father forever. In his prayer to the Father, he requested the same glory that he is to receive from the Father for all of us who believe in his name. So, his gift of the Holy Spirit to us is in preparation for the inheritance the Father has already granted us through the prayer and salvific work of the Son of Man. Thus, among the gifts of the Holy Spirit to us, wisdom is a special virtue for overseers. Wisdom is a kingly virtue that helps us direct all things to their proper end. To each of us is entrusted the kingdom of God that is within us; we are to trade everything to make it properly ours. The parable of our Lord confirms the vocat...

TUESDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 20:17-27; Ps 68:10-11,20-21; Jn 17:1-11 The Spirit of Fortitude The love of God the Father makes him give us his Son to save us from sin and evil, and his Holy Spirit to abide with us and bring us into communion with him. These gifts of the divine Persons are gifts beyond our imagination, through which we begin to estimate the love of the Father for us. Jesus especially referred to the Holy Spirit as the Gift from the Father. Cf. Lk 11:13. We have spiritual life when we receive the Holy Spirit, thanks to our Lord’s salvific works. The Holy Spirit, in order to properly strengthen and coordinate our spiritual life, which ought to overflow and oversee our natural life, gives us the seven gifts aiding our sanctification. We reflected on the gift of piety yesterday. Fortitude is the next gift of the Holy Spirit by which he solidifies our spiritual life. Through the gift of fortitude, the Holy Spirit gives us firmness in difficu...

MONDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 19:1-18; Ps 68:2-7; Jn 16:29-33 The Spirit of Piety One of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is piety. The gift of piety is not irrelevant in our spiritual life and walk, for it is a virtue that deepens and strengthens our religious commitment to God. It usually arises from a deep knowledge of God gained through faith. Naturally, we do not know God. We do not understand his essence, which is beyond our comprehension. The little we know of God is usually through analogy, as in the use of metaphors by our Lord. We are made in the image of God, which is within us. But the image is dark without divine light. It is only in Jesus Christ that we see the divine image most illuminated by the divine light. Hence, the Son of Man is a mystery to our human gaze. The image is not what is outwardly given, but inwardly seen with the spiritual sight. None of us has his spiritual sight untarnished by sin. Hence, we need the Holy Spirit to give u...

SUNDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 1:12-14; Ps 27:1,4,7-8; 1 Pet 4:13-16; Jn 17:1-11 The Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ The readings express the yearning of the earth for the spiritual regeneration that the Father planned to accomplish for us. The deep yearning expressed by creatures is already a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to material creation that he brought into existence and sustains as a new beginning of a spiritual life for human beings. We lost our spiritual life with God when our first parents disobeyed the injunction of God not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Their disobedience, which denied them participation in the banquet of the Lord, served by his word, made them participants in the sinful communion of demons. That is what sin makes us, communicants in the cup of the devil. In his infinite mercy and compassion, God the Father promised us redemption through his Son, when He promised to bring forth another woman...

SATURDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 18:23-28; Ps 47:2-3,8-10; Jn 16:23-28 The Spiritual Nativity of a Christian The important role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian cannot even be imagined by our natural mind, because a natural man cannot comprehend spiritual matters. This was the topic and the cause of Nicodemus's bewilderment when he came to discuss with Jesus Christ at night. As we already know, the descent of the Holy Spirit into a person's soul marks the spiritual birth of that person in God. Without this new birth, discerning and comprehending spiritual matters is like discerning the direction of the wind, according to the Son of Man. Because the unregenerated mind cannot easily receive the unction of the Holy Spirit, he may succeed in knowing material reality well after much effort, and some part of the spiritual reality in a confused and disorderly manner through the visible creation. When the Holy Spirit gives a repentant soul spiritual life t...