SACRIFICE FOR HEAVENLY TREASURE


BLESSED CYPRIAN MICHAEL IWENE TANSI, PRIEST   

Phil 2:1-11; Isa 12; Mt 13:44-46

Sacrificing All for Obedience

Obedience is usually born out of genuine knowledge and trust in someone. We obey because we know or believe that the one we are obeying has good intentions towards us and cares for our well-being. The virtue of obedience is usually nurtured in the family through the natural affinity we have with our parents. They gave birth to us and nurtured us to maturity. We naturally become aware of their love and solicitude for our well-being. This natural trust built into us by their care and provisions makes us obey them easily and with love and trust. The goodness of God provided the natural family ambience to help us easily and naturally transition from obedience to our parents to obedience to God, whom our parents represent. Hence, the parental care and duties are sacred unto the Lord. Hence, the commandment to honour father and mother has an immediate blessing attached to it. No one can neglect or abandon these parental duties with impunity. It is a duty we perform for God, for failure to instil the virtue of obedience in our children will make it difficult for them to graduate to obeying God’s words and commandments. When we do our work well, our children are able to understand the fatherhood of God and his divine providence in their lives. They easily obey God, knowing that his words and injunctions are born out of love and divine care for us.

The same divine love and providence is what Jesus Christ demonstrated for us in his whole life of obedience and trust in his heavenly Father. He continued a life of submission and obedience to his earthly parents. Saint Paul urges us to emulate the Saviour's life of obedience and humility in his letter to the Philippians. “In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus: His state was divine, yet he did not cling to his equality with God but emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross.” It is by his exceptional obedience to the Father that Jesus Christ brought us to spiritual birth. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has defined for us a new religion through which a sincere and spiritual sacrifice is offered to God the Father. His resurrection from the dead demonstrates that his sacrifice is always acceptable to the Father. “But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names so that all beings in the heavens, on earth and in the underworld, should bend the knee at the name of Jesus and that every tongue should acclaim Jesus Christ as Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Our sincere invocation of the holy name of Jesus Christ brings salvation to all of us who pattern our lives on his to the glory of God the Father.

The profession of faith in his life of obedience and the invocation of his name open our hearts for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, whom he sends into our hearts to help us obey the Father in love. So, through the act of obedience of faith, we trade our lives and desires for the kingdom of God, a treasure beyond our imagination. “Jesus said to the crowds: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in a field which someone has found; he hides it again, goes off happy, sells everything he owns and buys the field.” In holy obedience to the word of God, we trade our present life for the joys and riches of heaven. Just as the Psalmist says, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Blessed Cyprian Iwene knew this joy and abandoned everything in order to possess it in full. He was born in 1903 in Nigeria. He was brought up by the Holy Ghost Fathers (Spiritans) and trained as a teacher and a catechist. Later, he joined the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1937. In 1950, he left his Diocese to go to England, where he joined the Cistercian Abbey of Mount St. Bernard, near Nottingham. He had been singled out as the ideal candidate to be trained in England and then return to establish a Trappist Monastery in the Onitsha Diocese in Nigeria. He lived the monastic life with great faith and humility. Absorbed in prayer, he was a living example of patience and charity. He was diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm and died two weeks later on 20 January 1964.

Let us pray: O God, in the priest Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi you joined the apostolic zeal of a pastor to the way of life of a monk. Grant us by his intercession that persevering in prayer, we seek untiringly the coming of your kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.   

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