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REWARD BEYOND COMPREHENSION

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SUNDAY, TWENTY FIFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Isa 55:6-9; Ps 145:2-3,8-9,17-18; Phil 1:20-24,27; Mt 20:1-16 The Reward of Eternal Life God made us in his image and willed from all eternity to bless us with his own life. The divine gift would make us like God. This was the decision of the Triune God from the very beginning, when he said in Genesis 1:26: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Making man in divine image means giving him free will, which arises from the rationality of our nature. Our rationality demands that we freely choose to be like God. To be truly free to make the decision, man needs the enlightenment of knowledge of God, which comes from the Word of God. Man’s knowledge of God requires time to engage with the Word. But the Word is God. Man needs to be guided to divine knowledge through creation, which manifests God’s glory and his divine attributes. For this reason, man needs to work in God’s vineyard to discover himself through knowledge of creatures and be...
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CELEBRATING THE EUCHARIST WITH GAIN

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SATURDAY, TWENTY FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 15:35-37,42-49; Ps 56:10-14; Lk 8:4-15 Making Profit from the Gospel Our Eucharistic celebration, which we understand as a ritual presentation of the Gospel of salvation, mediates the coming together of the Gospel as revealed divine truth and our human life on earth. The revealed truth, the Gospel, is spiritual life; our human life on earth is death because of the corruption of sin. The Eucharistic liturgy provides the occasion for the mingling of the two, so that life will gradually swallow death, and light will chase away darkness. The Eucharistic celebration is comparable to a seed nursery where the seed of the Gospel is first sown and nurtured in us in a controlled spiritual ambiance before we carry it to our different life situations. In the Eucharistic liturgy, we are supercharged with divine grace conducive to the growth of spiritual life. The liturgical ambiance, replete with divine words, gestures, sacramental signs, an...
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THE EUCHARIST CELEBRATES THE GOSPEL

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SAINT JUAN MACIAS, RELIGIOUS 1 Cor 15:12-20; Ps 17:1,6-8,15; Lk 8:1-3 The Church and the Gospel In our previous reflection, we highlighted the relationship between the Gospel and the Church. We consider the Church as the Gospel believed and lived. We enrich our membership in the Church through a deeper understanding of the Gospel, and we understand the Gospel more through a better participation in the life of the Church. The core of the Church’s life is the Eucharistic celebration. The Eucharist is the font of the Church’s spirituality and life. As we noted yesterday, the Eucharistic celebration outlines our redemptive process, which is contained in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The very commencement of the Eucharistic celebration, with the invocation of the Trinity and the sign of the cross, offers a summary of what will happen through the celebration. The Gospel is the initiative of the Triune God, who willed to redeem us from our sin, death, and evil by restoring us to ...
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HAPPY THE PEOPLE WHOSE SINS ARE PARDONED

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THURSDAY, TWENTY FOURTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 1 Cor 15:1-11; Ps 118:1-2,15-17; Lk 7:36-50 Our Knowledge of God’s Love We cannot love God without God first coming to our help in love. The fact that we are sinners means that we are bereft of God’s life. Living in sin, we lack the knowledge of God and are unable to love him. God willed to bring us to spiritual life again by sending his Only Begotten Son to reveal his loving will to us. This is the content of the Gospel we have received. We cannot love God without getting acquainted with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The preaching of the Gospel is therefore the revelation of God’s love for us, for all peoples and nations. God invites everyone to his divine life through the proclamation of the Gospel. Hence, our ignorance of the Gospel causes our lack of repentance from our sins and sinful lifestyle. Our ignorance of the Gospel is ignorance of Jesus Christ; and the ignorance of Jesus Christ is ignorance of God and his loving pr...
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AMBITION FOR LOVE OF GOD

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SAINTS CORNELIUS, POPE, AND CYPRIAN, BISHOP, MARTYRS 1 Cor 12:31-13:13; Ps 33:2-5,12,22; Lk 7:31-35 A Good and Worthy Ambition God is infinite in every perfection. But the central perfection that best defines God's goodness is love. The first letter of Saint John 4:8 tells us that God is love, and anyone who loves is close to God. So, our growth in virtue of love is certain evidence that we are becoming like God. Recall that the purpose of our creation is to become like God. So, love advances us on the way of perfection more than any other virtue. Saint Paul understood this and encouraged us to be ambitious for the gift of love. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, for he is specifically called Love. “Be ambitious for the higher gifts. And I am going to show you a way that is better than any of them.” The gift of love is more than any other spiritual gift, for loving leads us to immediate sharing in divine life. Love hits the mark, the bull’s eye. The other spiritual gifts only h...
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THE MOTHER OF SORROWS

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OUR LADY OF SORROWS 1 Cor 12:12-14,27-31; Ps 100; Jn 19:25-27 Woman, behold Your Son The Blessed Virgin Mary features prominently in the life of the Church because she played a key role in the life and mission of her Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. The Scriptures reveal the Church as the body of Jesus Christ, with Jesus Christ as her sacred and divine Head. The Holy Cross of Jesus Christ, which we understand as encompassing all that the Son of God endured in his Incarnation, life, death, and resurrection for the salvation of man, spills into the life of all his disciples. In a very prominent way, it spills into the life of his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. For this reason, the Church celebrates her sorrows immediately after the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Seven Sorrows of our Lady are events of her participation in the Cross of our Lord. The Seven Sorrows are: (1) The Prophecy of Simeon (Luke 2:34–35), (2) The Flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13–14), (3) The Loss of...
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THE LESSONS OF THE CROSS

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FEAST OF THE EXALTATION OF THE HOLY CROSS Phil 2:6-11; Ps 78:1-2,34-38; Jn 3:13-17 The Son of Man must be lifted Up The core of the mystery of Jesus Christ as the Son of Man is his cross. The cross of Jesus Christ signifies his passion and death on Calvary. The passion and death of the Son of Man constitute the centre of the mystery of Jesus Christ as the Saviour of the world. Therein lies the mystery of human salvation. The divine aspect of the mystery is our faith that the One who died on the cross is God and man. How would God allow his Son to become man, to suffer, and to die a cruel death for the salvation of us, men? There is no other reasonable answer to the question than Saint John’s statement in 1 Jn 4:8 that God is love. Often, love appears irrational. The Father's love for us led him to give up his Son to ransom slaves. This is the core of the mystery for us, for it poses an impasse to our poor human understanding. But God really willed that; and his Only Begotten ...
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