Reflection from Friar Nicholas

Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: Going to Galilee to see the Risen Lord Faith in the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ was the focus of the preaching of the early Christian community. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an article of faith and not something given to the senses. As contained in our reflection for Easter Sunday, the Risen Jesus Christ is not the same as the crucified Christ. The risen and glorified Lord is a mystical Personage. He rose with his divine consciousness as the habitual consciousness, different from his human consciousness, which was habitual during his earthly ministry. This post-resurrection divine consciousness makes his body a glorified body. So, as a glorified body, it cannot be seen by mere sensible eyes; one must have a spiritual sight afforded by faith in his divinity. According to the account given in the gospel, the women who came to the tomb to anoint his body could recognise him because they believed the angel who appeared to

EASTER SUNDAY/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke Theme: Look for the Things in Heaven The resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ marks the eternal Day of our salvation. It is our day of rest in God. As the sacred author writes in the book of Genesis, “Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. On the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after the work he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy.” In the same manner, God has blessed this day and made it holy for us. Therefore, this is a holy day of God, for it is the day in which God rested after he had finished the work of redemption of man. When the Son of Man finished his redemptive work on the cross of Calvary, he cried: ‘It is finished.’ God’s creation of man was finished, for the human nature the Eternal Word assumed has been made like God. Thus, relatively, God rested when he finished the creation of man in his image and in his likenes

Holy Saturday/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: The Rest of God in the Flesh The earth is quiet today because God has fallen asleep in the flesh. The death of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, is the rest of God in human flesh. The human death of the Son of Man, for the love of us, gives us a proper understanding of what it means for God to rest after work. The sacred author used this expression to explain the cessation of the creative activities of God in the book of Genesis. Application of this expression to God can cause a misunderstanding because God is a Spirit and does not rest as we understand rest applicable to man. One can say that God rested because he brought a particular sequence of creative activities to its term. This sequence of activities commenced with the creation and spans through salvation history, as the different readings selected for Easter vigil illustrate. We must not understand the rest of God in an absolute sense, for there is

  Good Friday/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: The Sacrifice of the Lamb of God The Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the centre of attraction for us. Good Friday is a special day to celebrate the Cross of Jesus as a symbol of a unique and unrepeatable miracle of grace. The universal Church relives the sacrifice the Lamb of God made of himself for our redemption. The humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the Lamb of God, has many prefiguration down the salvation history. He is prefigured in Abel the just, Isaac as a willing victim, the lamb of Passover in Egypt, etc. These are various prefiguration of the Lamb of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, has two natures: the nature of God and the nature of man. In his nature as God, he is the Eternal Word of God, consecrated to the Father with whom he shares the Godhead. He is sacrificed (dedicated) to the Father from all ages; hence, the celebration is not so much about this rea

Maundy Thursday/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP Theme: Sacred Institutions of Love As we enter the three most holy days of the season within the Holy Week, the Church turns our attention to the most sacred things and events of our Christian faith. The morning celebration focusses on the institution of the Sacred priesthood that the Son of God, in his sacred humanity, instituted to perpetuate his presence and ministry among his people. The Cathedral is suitable for the celebration, with the bishop as the chief celebrant and all the priests around him sharing in the sacred Order of Jesus Christ and Melchizedek. The priesthood, which the bishops have in fullness, is a ministry of love and service. The purpose of its institution is to mediate divine presence among his people. The priest is ordained to give or minister the holiest things to the people, namely, God’s word and Sacraments. The priest daily receives the word of God and administers the Sacraments. He becomes wha

Wednesday, Holy Week/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: Alas for the Man who betrays the Son of Man We remain a little while on the case of Judas and the loss of souls to sin and evil. The agony of our Lord over the possible loss of one of his apostles is again put before us by the Church. The gospel is from Matthew’s account. It supplies extra information to what John the Evangelist presented yesterday about Judas being the treasurer of the apostolic group. According to the gospel, Judas bargained for a price to deliver the Lord to those who sought his life. He was well informed on the intention of the chief priests and the religious leaders to kill Jesus Christ. He went out to cash out on that opportunity. John called him a thief and revealed that he takes money from the purse to help himself. These descriptions of the person of Judas give us a window to look into his mindset. We see a personality that is self-centred and selfish. We understand a person always m

Tuesday, Holy Week/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: The Path to Betrayal of the Lord The comparison we made between Mary of Bethany’s attentiveness to the word of God and Judas Iscariot’s inattentiveness reflected the mind of the Lord, that of the Church. The readings draw our attention to Judas. Mary’s attention to the word of God inspired her love for Christ and her action to prophesy the coming death of Our Lord. The Lord expressed this himself when he says: “Leave her alone; she had to keep this scent for the day of my burial. You have the poor with you always, you will not always have me.” Our Lord saw that Mary’s pure nard, she opened for him, will soon be used for his burial. Mary, of course, did not know this since she was acting under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This guidance happens when we habituate ourselves with the word of God. The word of God is Spirit, and those who live by it live by the Spirit. The reverse is the case for a life lived in th

Monday, Holy week/ 2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: Mary of Bethany’s Sacrifice of her Pure Nard We follow the events in Bethany sixth day before the Passover in the house of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Jesus visited with his disciples and was at the table with Lazarus while Martha waited on them. Mary holds our attention again by her actions. Recall that she did the same thing in one of the Lord’s earlier visits to the family when she took her position at the feet of the Lord and left her sister Martha to do all the cooking and serving. She listened with rapped attention to the teachings of the Lord. The Lord came to her defence, when Martha got perplexed with too much work and complained to him about Mary and her attitude. Our Lord enlightened Martha on the importance of listening to the word of God, and explained that such an engagement has priority in the list of human activities. The event recorded in the gospel reading shows that Mary’s preoccupation with the w

PALM SUNDAY Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP Theme: Walking the Path of His Humility As we enter the Holy Week with the celebration of Palm Sunday, a central message or theme stands out from the readings of today. The short ceremony of blessing of the palms, the procession, the readings, and the passion narrative all bring home to us the message of humility that characterizes the passion of the Saviour. Our Lord has completed his preaching mission and knew that his time had come to go up to Jerusalem for the ultimate Passover; he resolutely took the road to Jerusalem with his disciples. He made it a triumphant entry because it is the Father’s will as written in the scriptures. In addition to fulfilling his Father’s will, the entrance was the sacrament of his glorification. The Son of Man was about to inaugurate the new Jerusalem; that means he was about to ascend his everlasting throne, all as written in the scriptures. In the background is his intention to make it clear to

Saturday, Fifth Week of Lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: The New Covenant of Peace for all People   In Ezekiel’s prophecy of eternal peace that God will establish between himself and Israel, noteworthy is the fact that God will do this by his divine power. God promised to gather the sons of Israel from wherever they were scattered and bring them to the land he promised their forefathers. The physical meaning and fulfilment of this prophecy are not of our interest, but the spiritual meaning and fulfilment we have been contemplating throughout the week. The spiritual children of Israel God referred to are not physical descendants of Abraham but his spiritual descendants. They are scattered throughout the nations because, though they are born of various nationalities, they are descended from Abraham by their hunger for God and eager faith in the word of God. Their faith and love for the word of God draw them together to the new Jerusalem. “I shall make them in

Friday, Fifth Week of Lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP Theme: Growing in Covenant Awareness What is necessary for us to grow in the awareness of our Covenant with God is having the word of God as the foundation of our life. In yesterday’s reflection, we distinguished between the physical Promised Land and the spiritual Promised Land. The former is for the physical descendants of Abraham, and the latter is for the spiritual descendants of Abraham, which include Jews and Gentiles alike. The latter is a spiritual reality and, therefore, accessible only through spiritual awareness and growth in the Covenant given by the word of God. We have come to understand that the word of is the foundation and essence of the Covenant. Hence, growth in attending to the word of God makes for growth in awareness of the Covenant. Since the word of God is the principle of spiritual life, we must each day employ it in our daily living and transactions of life to grow in the life it offers.

Thursday, Fifth Week of Lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP Theme: The Covenant of Inheritance We discuss further the theme of this week’s reflection, which is covenant, taking up the aspect of the perpetuity of the covenant and the inheritance thereby. We cannot over-emphasize that the word of God spoken to men constitutes a covenant relation. The word of God is God by essence, and when spoken to men, it establishes a relationship between God and men who receive and keep the word. By keeping the word of God within us, we become a habitation of God, who invariably becomes man’s habitation and shelter. Thus, the Promise God made to Abraham became a reality by the very fact of God speaking and willing it. The physical manifestation of what God promised would depend on and wait for Abraham’s internalisation of the word and exercise of faith in the word of God. Hence, because the word of God became his dwelling place and gradually evolved the physical realities promised him

Wednesday, Fifth Week of Lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke,OP Theme: The Covenant of Absolute Freedom The word of God is essentially a covenant between God and whoever believes and holds onto it. All the covenants are the same on the side of God because they are the word of God spoken to men. But each takes a different form according to the time and circumstances of those who constitute the audience. Before the Eternal Word became flesh at the fullness of time, those who believed in the Word of God down the salvation history understood they had to believe and trust God. The gauge of the depth of their communion with God and interaction with him was the faith they exercised in his word. The three young Israelites in the first reading lived their covenant with God while in Babylon. In their challenging circumstance, their faith in God required defying the orders of the king of Babylon. They did their part, and God showed himself to be their God. “If you refuse to worship it

Solemnity of St. Joseph, Husband of Blessed Virgin Mary. Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Theme: St. Joseph, the Steward in the New Covenant We celebrate the solemnity of St. Joseph, the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From the readings before us, the Church prompts us to reflect on the faith of St. Joseph. Though the scriptures have little on him, the all-important role he played in the redemptive mission of our Lord says much about him. The central virtue of St. Joseph is his faith in God. If God found David faithful to be entrusted with the kingship of Israel while he was busy with his father’s flock in the bush, we judge Joseph’s faith similar or equal to none, for God to have found him worthy of being entrusted with his most treasured people. One can even say that he received the fulfilment of what God promised David as a reward for his faithfulness. “When your days are ended and you are laid to rest with your ancestors, I will preserve the offspring of your body after

Monday, fifth week of lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nicholas Okeke, OP Offsprings of Old man and New Man To be able to live the new life within the new Covenant in Jesus Christ, the old life must come to an end. The distinctive difference between the old man and the new man is the focus of desires. The old man and all who live by him have their desires focussed on the satisfaction of self. On the other hand, the new man and those living by him desires only to fulfil God's holy will. Thus, the old man and his offspring obey the law of sin and death. Living for self alone breeds sins, and sin causes death. So, the old man and all living by him are dead and harbingers of death to others. They are adept at manipulating the Law of God to perpetuate their interest and selfish desires. An example of this skill is the treatment the two old judges of Israel in Babylon meted out to Susanna, wife of Joachim, employing the Law of Moses as given in the first reading. “Two elderly men had

Sunday fifth week of lent/2024 Reflection from Friar Nick Okeke, OP Theme: A new covenant in his blood God is love and does all things in view of our salvation. At the fullness of time, he came to our rescue with his love which has no limit. The fullness of time is considered with reference to us, and not with respect to God. Time and season have meaning only with reference to us. Thus, when God decided to make a new covenant with his people, he considered an appropriate time to pour out the fullness of his love for the salvation of human race gone astray in sin. The new covenant is to have the satisfaction of the demands of the Law by his Son, so that the merit of his righteousness would be applied to us sinners. What are the merits of the Son’s obedience to the Father’s will? “This is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel when those days arrive—it is the Lord who speaks. Deep within them I will plant my Law, writing it on their hearts. Then I will be their God and they sh