Reflection from Friar Nicholas

22 DECEMBER 1 Sam 1:24-28; 1 Sam 2:1,4-6; Lk 1:46-56 Jesus, the King desired by the People Human nature is incomplete without God, for God made us for himself, to live in communion with him. Only our communion with God will bring us to be like God. If we are created to be like God, we are therefore made to be ruled by God's word. When Adam and Eve failed to take God's word as the rule of their lives from the beginning due to the serpent's deception, God proposed another means to represent His word to us for our redemption and glory. We see through the history of salvation that God has taken pains to prepare a people to receive his word in faith and live in communion with him. In so doing, all the peoples and nations would learn to do the same, thereby entering into the planned communion of God and men. In the divinely planned communion, the Eternal Word of God will be our King, and we will be his loved and cherished subjects, worshipping God and sharing his dominion o...

  SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Rom 1:1-7; Mt 1:18-24 Jesus, the Rising Sun The readings for the fourth Sunday of Advent include some of the readings for 20 December. This is because the readings of 21 December are replaced with the Sunday readings. Hence, it would seem we are taking the same readings as those of yesterday. But the second reading and the Gospel are different. But the novena theme is that of the 21 December. We consider Jesus as the Rising Sun of God with healing rays. Just as the sun rises to dispel the darkness of the night, bringing in the day when people rise with new hope, joy, and aspiration for a new day, Jesus Christ is coming as a new dawn of divine revelation and spiritual energy. He brings new spiritual life, strength, and hope for eternity to men who live subdued by the forces of evil, sin, and death. Because he comes with spiritual light, we need faith to connect to him and receive the light that he brings. At his birth mor...

20 DECEMBER Isa 7:10-14; Ps 24:1-6; Lk 1:26-38 Jesus, Key of David and Sceptre of Israel The Church invokes and praises the Saviour as the Key of David and Sceptre of Israel. We understand the former title from different perspectives. As the Key of David, the Son of Man is the access to the promised House that God is to build for David. David's desire and intention were to build a house for God. But God made him understand through Nathan the prophet that it is not man who builds a house for God, but rather the reverse is the case; God builds an everlasting house for Himself and for man. In the first instance, we understand man to be the original house God is constructing for himself. In the second instance, in the house that man is, each of us learn to live in the house of God, in communion with him. So, God is building us into a house where he will dwell with us in communion. In this latter sense, David was already being constructed into a house for God by his faith in the w...

19 DECEMBER Judges 13:2-7,24-25; Ps 71:3-6,16-17; Lk 1:5-25 Jesus, the Stock of Jesse The Church venerates and adores the Eternal Word as the Stock or Root of Jesse. As we explained yesterday, God’s revelation of His Word is the foundation of our existence and well-being. Thus, after the fall of Adam and Eve, which happened as a result of their disobedience to the word given to them, God did not abandon man and woman, whom he made in his own image to be a temple for his Son. He upheld the human race by his promise of salvation. In due time, he called Abraham and revealed his word to him. The Word that God gave to Abraham is the foundation or root of human salvation history. The word of God is the infallible foundation of all things, for the Word is God. To be the foundation of our salvation, we need to believe in the Word. Therefore, all the patriarchs are built on a firm foundation of the word of God through their faith, for without faith, it is impossible to please God. By ca...

18 DECEMBER Jer 25:5-8; Ps 72:1-2,12-13,18-19; Mt 1:18-24 Jesus, Adonai and Leader of Israel The name Adonai is used in Hebrew or Judaism in place of the unpronounceable name Yahweh or “YHWH” in its tetragrammaton. It means 'Lord,' 'Master,' or 'Ruler of all things.' It also means Creator of all things. Here, we see that the fact is added that the Eternal Word of God is also the Leader of Israel. By addressing Jesus Christ, the One who is to come as Adonai, the Church recognises the equality of God with His Eternal Word, His Begotten Son. He is God from God, and Light from Light. He is begotten of the Father, and through him all things were made. Hence, he is also the Creator of all things in his own right. As the maker of all things, they all owe their existence and allegiance to him. In this sense, every creature has obediential potency to the Word of God; owing their nature to him, they are also eager to fulfil his will in anything, and anytime the Eter...

17 DECEMBER Gen 49:2,8-10; Ps 72:1-4,7-8,17; Mt 1:1-17 Jesus, the Eternal Wisdom of God The Church starts the Christmas Novena today. During the Novena, she leads her children in meditating on various prophetic titles of Jesus Christ, which are used to prepare the minds of the people for his coming in human nature. These titles reveal various aspects of the mystery of Jesus Christ. Meditating on these various titles, we are gradually led into the deep mysteries of the Son of Man. As we noted yesterday, the coming of the Son of God in human nature is not an appendage to human history, but rather the centre and principle of it. Without the knowledge of the One who enlightens every man who comes into existence, the history of human existence remains dark and meaningless. The Eternal Word of God is the light that enlightens the whole creation and human existence and activities, especially. These special prophetic titles are, therefore, invitations to us to embrace Jesus Christ anew a...

TUESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT Zeph 3:1-2,9-13; Ps 34:2-3,6-7,16,18-19,23; Mt 21:28-32 The Gate of God’s Kingdom God made us for a purpose; namely, that we may know him, love him, and serve him in all things, so that we may commune with him forever. This divine purpose for man is enshrined in his word that he reveals to enlighten our intellect and inflame our hearts with love. The word is able to achieve these in us because it is Spirit and Life. Since our life has a purpose that is realisable only through the indwelling of the Eternal Word in us, the life of each of us will have no meaning when lived without the Word. This basic truth was illustrated in the reading from Numbers we had yesterday. The prophet Balaam revealed in his vision that the history of God’s people is inextricably tied to the coming of the Just One, who will reign over all. It is not only the life and history of the Israelites as the people of God that is intrinsically connected with the coming of the Word of...

MONDAY, THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT Numb 24: 2-7,15-17; Ps 25:4-9; Mt 21:23-27 Rejection of the Presence of God The presence of God is a given if we truly understand the meaning of his name, as he communicated it to us in the Scriptures. God is ‘I AM’, which implies existence and presence. Therefore, he cannot be absent from our situations and conditions. Our ignorance of his presence and operations within and around us is sometimes due to our ignorance of God’s name and his word through which he communicates himself to us. It can also be a result of self-deception or a decision not to admit any witness to his presence and works around us. Such a decision is usually because of a strong desire to achieve our own desires apart from God’s will. The overwhelming selfish desire forces us to overlook or ignore God’s presence and operations within and around us. We fall into the realm of evil if there is no conversion of heart, for even the revelation of God’s will to us by a third party does ...

SUNDAY, THIRD WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 35: 1-6,10; Ps 146:6-10; Jas 5:7-10; Mt 11:2-11 The Greatness of Our Salvation in Christ Patience is an inestimable virtue in our dealings with God, for it is a virtue that inherently characterises the creature before the Creator. It is an outgrowth of the faith we profess in God. Faith takes the form of patience because it has no prior understanding or knowledge of the salvation God promised us. We only attempt a reconstruction of our salvation from our present ills and woes. We try to imagine a situation or existence without problems of our present mortal life, which gives us an idea of what salvation God promised would look like. But a proper conception of the salvation God promises us is impossible. Because God promises us what has never entered the human mind, no eye has seen, no ear has heard what God is preparing for us. 1 Cor 2:29. We have no idea where God is taking us or what he has promised us as a reward of faithfulness; we can only wa...

SAINT LUCY, VIRGIN, MARTYR Eccl 48:1-4,9-12; Ps 80:2-3,15-16,18-19; Mt 17:10-13 Misinterpretation of Signs of Presence The name and essence of God mean Presence. But we rarely understand and relate to him in that sense. Objectively, God is everywhere, for no place or thing can be without God sustaining it in being. We can hardly internalise this basic truth because of our makeup and manner of operation after the original fall. The original sin of Adam and Eve, which affected all of us, reorganised human awareness and the way we encounter and know reality. Because Adam and Eve departed from the glory of God, which had covered them and conditioned their perception of reality, they lost their original ability to comprehend the totality of reality. Their nakedness, which they became aware of, is a testimony to the lost habitual glory of God covering them. They were not naked before, for the glory of God was their internal and external apparel. The awareness of their nakedness was not...

FRIDAY, SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 48:17-119; Ps 1:1-4,6; Mt 11:16-19 Strength from Attention to God Our attention to God is key to our transformation into his likeness, for the word of God comes to live within us only through our paying attention to God in order to understand his divine will for us. Maintaining our attention on God, whom we do not see, is a very difficult task. It is even more difficult in our multimedia and social media world. We must make a conscious and concerted effort every day to hold onto the word of God. Attention is the heart of prayer and contemplation. So, to continue our spiritual journey to God, we must devise a means of keeping our attention on him and on his word, in order to be directed on our way. We must convince ourselves that there is no other way leading to God less than his word. By presenting himself to us as our way, truth, and life, the Son of Man implied we should focus daily on his life to learn or grasp the mystery of the Father’s will...

THURSDAY, SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 41:13-20; Ps 145:1,9-13; Mt 11:11-15 Our Greatness is in God God made our nature for himself, and only God knows it completely. As we noted in the previous reflections, only God can truly understand how miserable we are without him; He knows the woes of our nature when separated from the goal or purpose of its existence. In view of this, God does not spare any effort or grace for our redemption and good. He came to the aid of the mortal man immediately after the fall with the promise of redemption, giving his word as a guarantee of the infallible promise. We need only believe in order to experience the power of God and his redemptive grace. If there occurs a time lapse between the promise and its fulfilment, then it is for the human faith to mature and support the realisation of the divine promises. Human nature, made in the image of God, can accomplish many things within the material universe, but all our works, compared to what we can accompl...

WEDNESDAY, SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 40:25-31; Ps 103:1-4,8,10; Mt 11:28-30 Natural Invitation to the Saviour We all have a natural invitation to the Saviour who comes in a nature like ours. The reason for the Eternal Word garbing himself with our nature is precisely to attract and hold our attention. This is the meaning of an invitation: an expression of a desire to share something with a person or people we invite to join us. God wills to commune with us, to share his life with us. There is no better invitation to us than to see our Saviour appear in flesh and blood like ours. As reflected yesterday, what prompts our God to seek us out is his infinite compassion and knowledge of our nature, which he made in the image of his own divine nature. Understanding the implications of our straying from communion with him, even more than we can ever comprehend, he comes in the Incarnation of his Word to locate, identify with us, and redeem us. In taking our nature to himself, God places ...

TUESDAY, SECOND WEEK OF ADVENT Isa 40:1-11; Ps 96:1-3,10-13; Mt 18:12-14 Finding the Lost Sheep The parable of the lost sheep in the Gospel reveals God’s economy of salvation and confirms our understanding of the mystery of the human person in relation to God. It also throws light on the mystery of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We consider the parable first from the aspect of the compassionate heart of our God, who made and understands the lost sheep. God’s complete knowledge of our human nature, which he made in his image, implies that he understands completely and uniquely the woes and conditions of the lost sheep; what we would suffer away from his presence and loving guidance. The fact that he made us for himself means that away from his presence and the light of his word, we are miserably exposed to the manipulations of the forces of evil and the darkness of our nature without God’s light. These conditions are the sources of terrible sufferings for us, who wander away from ...

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY Gen 3: 9-15,20; Ps 98:1-4; Eph 1:3-6,11-12; Lk 1:26-38 The Handmaid of the Lord After the fall of Adam and Eve, it seemed almost impossible that God would realise the divine plan of making us to be like him. The cunning serpent knew how important the principle of man’s generation was for the human race to attain the divine goal or purpose; So, he planted his sinful seed in the material generators or first parents of our race. God, who is the source of all wisdom and knowledge, foreknew the evil intention of the cunning serpent and warned Adam and Eve of the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. The real warning was on the consequences of disobeying the word of God, that God secretly made the spiritual head or principle of our race. That the word of God is the head of the human race is implied in the revealed purpose of the creation of man, for man cannot be like God without containing the word of God. In this deeper light...