Reflection from Friar Nicholas

SAINT ALPHONSUS MARY DE’ LIGOURI, BISHOP, DOCTOR  Levi 23:1,4-11,15-16,27,34-37; Ps 81:3-6,10-11; Mt 13:54-58 The Solemnization of the Presence The first reading is from the book of Leviticus. It reveals the measure Yahweh took to prevent the people from taking the divine presence for granted, which God established among the people for the flourishing of communion between him and the people. If the construction of the tabernacle and the Tent of Meeting among the people, though a bit separate from them, was to promote their communion with Yahweh, there was a need to prevent the people from sinning gravely against the Holy God by treating his presence as something banal. God, therefore, gave Moses and Aaron the list of solemn festivals the people must celebrate throughout the year, to help them recall the great events that marked their covenant relationship with Yahweh. “These are the Lord’s solemn festivals, the sacred assemblies to which you are to summon the sons of Israel o...

  SAINT IGNATIUS LOYOLA, PRIEST Exod 40:16-21,34-38; Ps 84:3-6,8,11; Mt 13:47-53 The Selection and Building Process The encounter between the children of Israel and God on mountain Sinai constituted the people as God’s people. The terrifying sights and events witnessed by the people were to make them loyal to the will of God as their God. It was a covenant ceremony which was to bring the people to become close to God, and own the God that delivered them from slavery in Egypt. While Moses went up to get the written terms of the covenant, the Ten Commandments, the people apostatised; they decided to make a god that would be easily accessible to them. They considered the God of Moses far away from them, especially when Moses spent forty days and nights on the mountain. The apostasy of the people reveals to us that fear is never a good driver for the worship of God. We must come to God with understanding and love. Yahweh henceforth started building his relationship with the peopl...

WEDNESDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exod 34:29-35; Ps 99:5-7,9; Mt 13:44-46 The Purchase of Eternal Life We read that Moses, the servant of Yahweh, stayed forty days and nights on the Mount of Sinai interacting with Yahweh. Such a feat only demonstrates the presence of the divine reality interacting with Moses, for such is not possible with our mere human strength. At the first occurrence of this, the people waiting for Moses at the foot of the mountain got tired and decided to make a god they could easily access. They regretted the decision afterward. Moses had to go back again to receive the Ten Commandments inscribed on two stone tablets anew after the people’s repentance and appeasement of God. He broke the first out of anger at the sight of Israel’s idolatry. Not to stray from our point of interest, we need much patience to receive God’s self-communication, for he is our priceless gift. To demonstrate the reality and the glory of what Moses received from Yahweh for ...

SAINTS MARTHA, MARY, AND LAZARUS Exod 33:7-11, 34:5-9,28; Ps 103:6-13; Lk 10:38-42 Our Best Spiritual Work The passage from Exodus, giving us a glimpse into the interaction between God and Moses, is quite revealing about our relationship with God. As we noted yesterday, all our sins originate from a lack of attention to God’s self-communication to us. God forgives our sins as we ask for forgiveness. But none is overlooked or glossed over by his infinite justice. God made this revelation to Moses as he passed by him. “He called on the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger, rich in kindness and faithfulness; for thousands he maintains his kindness, forgives faults, transgression, sin; yet he lets nothing go unchecked, punishing the father’s fault in the sons and in the grandsons to the third and fourth generation.’” We ought to take this self-revelation of God to Moses very seriously. It p...

MONDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exod 32:15-24; Ps 106:19-23; Mt 13:1-35 The Growth of the Mustard Seed The Lord uses another parable to explain the mystery of the kingdom of heaven. In the parable, he compared the kingdom of God to a mustard seed, which is very small when compared to other seeds. By using the analogy of a seed to speak about the word of God, he wants us to understand that the word of God has a life of its own. He affirms this vital property in another passage when he said that his words are spirit and life. These two coming together in the word of God means that the word of God is the source of spiritual life. The word is the seed of spiritual life; no one can possess a spiritual life unless he sows the word in his mind and heart. The parable implies this. “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so t...

SUNDAY, SEVENTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gen 18: 20-32; Ps 138:1-3,6-8; Col 2:12-14; Lk 11:1-13 Praying for Enduring Things All the readings the Church gives us to reflect on are on the subject of prayer; how to pray and what to pray for. A background to Christian understanding of prayer, which we have emphasised in our reflections, is that prayer is always a gift we receive, individually and communally, in which we cooperate with God. In other words, when God desires to offer us a heavenly gift, he sends his grace through the Holy Spirit to awaken our desire to receive the gift, which we express in prayer. So, both the desire or disposition for the gift, and the gift are gifts received from our heavenly Father. Are there prayers that are not gifts from God? The answer is no! But we have corrupted prayers, which are disordered expressions of the gifts from God. Every prayer is a gift from God because he is the origin of all emotions and motions. Since prayer is a spiritual motio...

SAINT JOACHIM AND ANNE, PARENTS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Exo 24:3-6; Ps 50:1-2,5-6,14-15; Mt 13:24-30 Blood of the Covenant between us and God The terrifying events that marked the manifestation of God to the children of Israel in sacramental form, at the foot of Mount Sinai, compelled them to agree to all the terms of the covenant he proposed to them. There is no doubt that many had genuine faith in the Lord and were willing to enter into communion with the God of their fathers. Many entered the communion out of fear; they acceded to the terms of the covenant like slaves do to their master’s words, out of fear. “Moses went and told the people all the commands of the Lord and all the ordinances. In answer, all the people said with one voice, ‘We will observe all the commands that the Lord has decreed.’ Those who said yes to the ordinances of the Lord out of fear would gradually show for what they are, namely, slaves to their senses. Slaves cannot give themselves to another with...

FEAST OF SAINT JAMES, APOSTLE 2 Cor 4:7-15; Ps 126:1-6; Mt 20:20-28 Drinking the Cup of the Lord We explained yesterday that God used terrifying sounds, sights, and words to instil fear in the minds and hearts of children of Israel because such was their treatment in their slavery in Egypt. God employed fear and terror to effectively communicate to those who were treated as slaves and understand well through such treatment. Though the Law he transmitted to them is spiritual and life-giving, he gave it in a way to instil fear in the slaves he was guiding to inherit life through loving obedience to his word. The Law, as spiritual, excludes the slave from possessing what God has promised his sons. Hence, every part of our members enslaved to physical or sensible realities is terrified to death by the manifestation of God and his divine will, and prevented from entering and possessing the spiritual gifts. The Law itself, being spiritual, cannot be kept by our physical or sensible mem...

THURSDAY, SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exo 19:1-2,9-11,16-20; Dan 3:52-56; Mt 13:10-17 What the Prophets Longed to Hear and See The two readings before us today provide a comparison of how God constituted the children of Israel as His people in the Old Testament, a type of His Church, and how He constituted His new people, the Church of God. The passage describes the scene at Mount Sinai, where Yahweh gave them his Commandments. The children of Israel were slaves in Egypt and familiar with hard labour and strong language. God used physical sounds, terrifying events, loud voices, and strong languages to communicate his will to them. Because they grovel to things of the senses, God used sensible things and events to make an impression on them. “Now at daybreak on the third day there were peals of thunder on the mountain and lightning flashes, a dense cloud, and a loud trumpet blast, and inside the camp all the people trembled.” The Lord employed this means because only terrifyin...

WEDNESDAY, SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exo 16:1-5,9-15; Ps 78:18-19,23-28; Mt 13:1-9 The Lord’s Provision for his People The children of Israel left Egypt under the protection and leadership of the Lord, represented by Moses, who was the Lord’s spokesman. As we noted earlier, the marching of the people of God under his direction constitutes the most formidable force on earth, for nothing can undermine the will of God for us, less than our lack of faith in God. Though they left Egypt in haste, making no provision for their journey through the wilderness, in the real sense of the multitude of people marching along, it would be practically impossible to make enough provision for such a huge number of people marching through the wilderness. Hence, we have noted that only the will of God and his providential care can sustain them in their journey. The divine will is our sufficient sustenance for our journey through life. But we must have faith in his creative word at every point o...

FEAST OF SAINT MARY MAGDALENE Song 3:1-4; Ps 63:2-6,8-9; Jn 20:1-2,11-18 The yearning of Our Hearts for God We pause our meditation on the journey of the children of Israel to the promised land, to celebrate the life of Mary Magdalene. The story of Mary Magdalene is an example of the transformative power of grace, made abundant for us through the life, death, and resurrection of the Son of Man. The snapshots of her life in the Gospel capture for us the three stages of our transformation or mystical journey into the mysteries of Jesus Christ. Mary came into the scene in the scripture, Lk 8:2, as one of the women attending to Jesus, from whom he cast out seven demons. Many identified her with the prostitute who came to Jesus as he was dining in the house of Simon the Pharisee, to weep at his feet in repentance. The identification may be true or not. What is certain is that Mary Magdalene had a past that made her passionately devoted to the Lord. At this first mention of her, we see...

MONDAY, SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exo 14:5-18; Exo 15:1-6; Mt 12:38-42 Something Greater than Solomon The children of Israel, setting out from Egypt under the leadership of Moses, who represented Yahweh’s word given to them for their deliverance, constituted the most formidable force on earth then. Made up of different and assorted people, believing and unbelieving, they set out according to the will of God and guided and guarded by the divine presence established by the word of God. It was foolhardy on the part of Pharaoh to have decided to chase after them. “When Pharaoh, king of Egypt, was told that the Israelites had made their escape, he and his courtiers changed their minds about the people. ‘What have we done,’ they said, ‘allowing Israel to leave our service?’ So Pharaoh had his chariot harnessed and gathered his troops about him, taking six hundred of the best chariots and all the other chariots in Egypt, each manned by a picked team.” It was a decision made in ign...

SUNDAY, SIXTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gen 18: 1-10; Ps 15:2-5; Col 1:24-28; Lk 10:38-42 Remaining with Jesus Christ God is presence, and everyone who worships him must enter the presence that God is and offers to us. We understand creation as God’s offer of existence to creatures. By creation, he brings things into existence and sustains them in being. By the same creative word, he offers us the opportunity to enter his presence and share his life. Abraham is a good example of one who received the word of God and entered into the presence of God by believing the word. By following the word of God to leave his family and familiar environment, God created a new environment, outlook, and vision for him. All the promises made to Abraham were contained in the word God spoke to him. They were present to his eyes of faith, waiting for the proper time for their manifestation in his life and lineage. The new reality God created for Abraham is a God centred reality. Abraham’s faith made ...

SATURDAY, FIFTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exod 12: 37-42; Ps 136:1,10-15,23-24; Mt 12:14-21 Going in the Company of God The children of Israel, following the will of God, left the land of Egypt after many years of sojourning there. A great crowd of people left the land of Egypt for the promised land of Canaan. The strength, protection, and communion of the crowd that left Egypt depend on their continuous obedience to the word of God. For as we have noted, the safety of all who seek the face of God is in their keeping the word of God and following his divine will. They left in a hurry as the Lord planned it, for he who leaves the land or place of sin and darkness to light must hurry, so as not to be corrupted by desires of sinful pleasures. They left without much provision for the journey, but the will of God is enough provision for those who follow him. It is the bread from heaven. As the saying goes, ‘many are called, but few are chosen,’ the crowd of people of different and ass...

FRIDAY, FIFTEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Exod 11: 10-12:14; Ps 116:12-13,15-18; Mt 12:1-8 The Sabbath is for Man Moses heard the voice of the Lord and saw the burning bush, which gave him a mystical or spiritual experience of the living God, the I Am, and he believed. By believing the word God spoke to him and acting in faith, he became a visible representation of God to the children of Israel and the Egyptians. Through him, God interacted with Pharaoh to bring about His divine will. Pharaoh’s lack of faith in the word of God spoken to him through Moses means his non-cooperation with the divine will. God had no choice but to use force to bend Pharaoh's will. In all these, we must understand how God respects the free will he gave to man. God achieves his plan and preserves the freedom of man’s free will through the dynamics of justice and mercy within his permitted will. He permitted the Egyptians to enslave the children of Jacob due to their infringements on the divine justice...