Reflection from Friar Nicholas

TUESDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT Ezek 47:1-9,12; Ps 46:2-3,5-6,8-9; Jn 5:1-3,5-16 Devotion to Paschal Realities We have noted that the Church’s interest and focus have shifted from self-mortifications and other observances to the paschal mysteries, which are the ends of the observances. A well-initiated Lenten observance leads to the freeing of minds and purification of our hearts, which enable us to devote them to the paschal mysteries. The humility acquired through our acknowledgment of sins and their confessions is necessary for receiving the new heavens and earth God promised and achieved through and in the humanity of his Son, Jesus Christ. The prophet Ezekiel speaks of the new heavens God promises to create in the passage from Isaiah we read yesterday. As we pointed out, the new heavens are the mysteries contained in the Son of God, whose humanity is the new earth. We are to access these new heavens through the sacred humanity of our Lord. Through the same humanity of our Lord, the b...

MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT Isa 65:17-21; Ps 30:2,4-6,11-13; Jn 4:43-54 New Heavens and a New Earth As we enter the fourth week of Lent, the Church’s focus moves from observances to the paschal mysteries. The purpose of the self-mortifications and other observances is to free our minds and hearts to understand and embrace the abundance of heavenly graces that come with celebrating our paschal mysteries. These mysteries are the new and heavenly realities God creates among us for our salvation. The prophet Isaiah prophesied about these new spiritual things surpassing the old as reality surpasses its shadow. “Thus says the Lord: Now I create new heavens and a new earth, the past will not be remembered and will come no more to men’s minds. Be glad and rejoice forever and ever for what I am creating, because I now create Jerusalem ‘Joy’ and her people ‘Gladness.’” God creates new heavenly realities, spiritually perceived and understood. So, the effort to purify our minds and hearts is...

FOURTH SUNDAY OF LENT Josh 5:9-12; Ps 34:2-7; 2 Cor 5:1-6,17-21; Lk 15:1-3,11-32 Eating of God in Freedom of Spirit A man born into slavery, groomed and raised as a slave, has no experience and knowledge of what it means to be freeborn. The children of Israel had no experience of living in a land they could call their own or their father’s land when they were in Egypt. They were all born in Egypt as foreigners and made slaves, and many of them understood and accepted their situation to be the usual. Their story shadows our situation as sinners called to be righteous in Jesus Christ. Given our birth and upbringing in sin, we cannot even imagine what a sinless life is like. The overwhelming experience of sin in our human life made the prophet Isaiah express despair at the vision of the glory of the most holy God. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips; and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King; the LORD of hosts!” We fee...

SATURDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT Hos 5:15-6:6; Ps 51:3-4,18-21; Lk 18:9-14 Humility as the Purpose of Mortification As we bring our reflections on the general theme of the week to an end, which we focussed on the sacred name of God: ‘I Am who I Am’, we try to highlight the critical points of the reflections. First is that the revealed name of God speaks volumes about the presence of God and his desire to be in communion with us. The holy name of God reveals God to be the consecration to himself and his creatures. Second is that the consecration, which God is, demands the corresponding sacrifice of ourselves to him. Hence, our sins arise from our failure to be present in the presence we call God. Third, all the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual afflictions he sends to us are to evoke the sacrifice we must make of ourselves to God. The words of the prophet Hosea are explicit on the divine purpose. “They will search for me in their misery. ‘Come, let us return to the Lor...

FRIDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT Hos 14:2-10; Ps 81:6,8-11,14,17; Mk 12:28-34 Deliverance from Unconscious Idolatry The scriptures inform us that only God knows the secret of our minds and sounds the very depth of our hearts. There are idols we worship unconsciously within us, which only God knows. The depths of our hearts are beyond our gaze, and our thoughts are sometimes remotely and externally controlled using the things we love. Without divine help, it would be impossible to know of these idols of the nation we have fallen victim to due to our spiritual slumber and lack of prayer vigilance. God sends his word to overthrow these idols the nations (meaning the crowds) have erected in our souls through our inadvertent followership. The unconscious idolatry we are guilty of, which is driven by human base desires, is the target of the purificatory afflictions and sufferings God permits for our conscious conversion to his holy will and worship. When we find ourselves in afflictions an...

THURSDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT Jer 7:23-28; Ps 95:1-2,6-9; Lk 11:14-23 Overcoming Evil with the Word of God Our inclusion of the slavery and afflictions the children of Israel went through in Egypt in God’s plan for their purification and foundation as the people of God gives us a deeper insight into passive purification. We emphasise this aspect of their incorporation into God’s covenantal plan to help us understand the importance of the passive purifications God sends our way in our spiritual journey. The undesired trials, sufferings, and afflictions are divine means of uprooting our pride, self-importance, and sufficiency that keep us aloof or neglectful of God’s words and calls. Many of us follow the dictates of our hearts. We do not care to know what the Lord wants of us, yet we glory in being called Christians. God addresses us through the prophet Jeremiah in the following words. “These were my orders: Listen to my voice, then I will be your God and you shall be my people. Fo...

WEDNESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT Deut 4:1,5-9; Ps 147:12-13,15-16,19-20; Mt 5:17-19 The Law and Prophets leading to the Promised Land Yahweh prepared the children of Israel through their afflictions in the land of Egypt, which happened according to his foreknowledge and divine plan. He thereby purified them to receive his self-communication and establish communion with them. As we stated earlier, the revelation of the sacred name of God to Moses was an invitation to divine communion and covenant. The God who introduced himself to Moses as ‘I Am who I Am’ is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By giving them this alternative identification, God established communion with them on the tradition formed by his interaction with their forefathers. The tradition promotes a shared consciousness and faithfulness to his word and communion arising from God’s self-communication. The laws given to them at Sinai enriched the revelation of the sacred name by defining the character of the God they...

SOLEMNITY OF THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE LORD Isa 7:10-14,8:10; Ps 40:7-11; Heb 10:4-10; Lk 1:26-38 The Mystery of God’s Presence with Us The Church puts her Lenten observances aside to celebrate the solemn feast of the Annunciation of the Lord. We celebrate the reception of the reality promised to our ancestors in faith, the presence of God in the human flesh. A few days ago, we celebrated Saint Joseph, the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as the guardian of this divine treasure. Today’s solemnity surpasses that, for we celebrate the reality of the heavenly gift. What was given to Moses for the people of Israel as a symbol in the divine name: 'I Am who I Am’, is realised in human flesh in what the Blessed Virgin Mary conceived. God made known his reason for giving his sacred name to the children of Israel for all; the gift of his holy name was a pointer to his intention to live among us, his people who believe in him. We slight God when we fail to match his desire to be with ...

MONDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT 2 Kings 5:1-15; Ps 42:2-3,42:3-4; Lk 4:24-30 Faith makes the Difference By revealing his most holy name, God has given corresponding faith to his people to believe in his sacred name and thereby gain access to the Promised Land. The land was never the important thing, but the revelation of God to the people he called to occupy the land. Faith made the children of Israel, whom God delivered from the house of bondage in Egypt, gain access and possess the land flowing with milk and honey. The latter is the real presence of God granted to them by the revelation of the most holy name of God. Thus, Saint Paul reminded us in his first letter to the Corinthians yesterday that many failed to enter the Promised Land because they did not believe in God. The author of the letter to the Hebrews informs us that those who entered the land of Canaan did not enter the Promised Land because they failed to enter God’s rest. The story of Naaman, the Syrian leper, substan...

THIRD SUNDAY OF LENT Exod 3:1-8,13-15; Ps 103:1-4,6-8,11; 1 Cor 10:1-6,10-12; Lk 13:1-9 The Revelation of God’s holy Name As we progress in our Lenten observance and journey towards the Paschal celebration, our understanding of God’s holiness and the demand it makes on us increase. The reading from Exodus tells us of God’s call and revelation of his name to Moses. An essential background to the story is the call of Abraham and the covenant God made with him. We read about that last Sunday. The understanding of the story of the enslavement of the children of Israel in Egypt and the vocation of Moses to lead them out is firmly rooted in the covenant relationship God established with their forefathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. By agreeing and entering the covenant with God, Abraham offered himself and his progenies as a sacrifice to God’s plan for the salvation of the human race. Recall that God promised to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars or the sands on the se...

SATURDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT Micah 7:14-15, 18-20; Ps 103:1-4,9-12; Mt 15:1-3,11-32 The Compassionate Heavenly Father It will be hard to understand the ways of God with our human mind and using our human ways. We have mentioned the intricate and delicate work God does in the salvation of each of us, sinful as we are. The merciful and compassionate God employs many external factors to help us believe in him. God conceives us spiritually only at the confession of faith in God. Before then, we are dead and non-existent within the family of God. The compassion and mercy of God are expressed on these two different levels when we are dead in sin and when we are finally conceived spiritually as his sons. Unlike our physical birth, when our parents conceived us without our consent, our consent and cooperation are necessary for our spiritual conception. Hence, God uses external factors and things to pressure us to come to spiritual life. The needed coercion for our spiritual conception i...

FRIDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT Gen 37:3-4,12-13,17-28; Ps 105:16-21; Mt 21:33-43,45-46 Our rejection of God’s Plan The two readings before us today have similar stories. They portray the evil of human greed and jealousy. These are cardinal vices that grow in our souls when left unattended with the light of the word of God. As we already know, every sin is rooted in our ignorance of the word of God, leading to ignorance of God. In the darkness caused by the absence of the light of the word of God, the evil one bloats our ego to make us think and see ourselves in a delusive manner. Greed and jealousy are two cardinal vices that ensconce the presence of evil and the power of darkness in our souls. Hence, whenever Saint Paul mentions greed in his letters, he describes it as worshiping another god. Greed is an evil tendency in a soul to sacrifice self and everything for the love and acquisition of a created good. It relativises God and everything to self and love for a creature. The vice...

THURSDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT Jer 17:5-10; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 16:19-31 The Reworking of Innocence in a Sinner To appreciate the work of God’s grace in us, we must sometimes reflect on our human conditions without God. We have come to understand sin as a turning away from God, which plunges the human soul into darkness. The darkness is from the absence of the word of God, the light of our souls. Our self-deprivation of the inner light that enlightens every man that comes into life is the original curse we inherited from Adam and Eve. God did not curse our fore-parents but directed the curse to the earth on which they and their forebears will thrive. They already attracted the curse to themselves by turning away from the word God gave to them as their light and life. Death was the curse or penalty for turning away from the word of God that is life. God reiterated this understanding through the prophet Jeremiah. “A curse on the man who puts his trust in man, who relies on things of fles...

SOLEMNITY OF SAINT JOSEPH, HUSBAND OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY 2 Sam 7:4-5,12-14,16; Ps 89:2-5,27,29; Rom 4:13,16-18,22; Mt 1:16,18-21,24 The Faithful Servant of God The Church celebrates the solemn feast of Saint Joseph, the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In marking this day as a solemn feast, the Church invites us to fix our gaze on the faithful and silent life of Joseph, who had the singular honour of being called the husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the (foster) father of Jesus Christ our Lord. Very little is said about Saint Joseph in the scriptures. The passage from second book of Samuel is about the promise made to David by God, concerning his house and Dynasty. “When your days are ended and you are laid to rest with your ancestors, I will preserve the offspring of your body after you and make his sovereignty secure. (It is he who shall build a house for my name, and I will make his royal throne secure for ever.) I will be a father to him and he a son to me.” Th...

TUESDAY, SECOND WEEK OF LENT Isa 1:10,16-20; Ps 50:8-9,16-17,21,23; Mt 23:1-12 The Possibility of living Sinless As we keep the dazzling figure of our Lord Jesus Christ on the mountain of transfiguration before us in our imagination, we ponder on our sinfulness and the possibility of attaining the sinlessness he beckons us to hope for. We can never get to such lofty glory by focusing on ourselves and our human ability. We know how weak we are when it comes to doing good. We don’t even know what is good for us and our salvation, for that is the prerogative of God, as he forbade Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Because we do not know ourselves, we do not know what is good for us. We end up in sin and enslaved to evil whenever we separate ourselves from God and take ourselves to be self-sufficient moral agents. The prophet Isaiah metaphorically passed this lesson to the Israelites when he called them people of Sodom. “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom; listen to the ...