Reflection from Friar Nicholas

SAINT JOSEPH THE WORKER    Acts 13:26-33; Ps 2:6-11; Mt 13:54-58  The Imitation of the Divine Worker We usually miss the fact that work is a divine activity. Our celebration of Saint Joseph the Worker is an invitation by the Church to give our minds and hearts to this all-important consideration. Often, we consider work to be a result of the original sin of Adam and Eve. We are mistaken in thinking that way, for the mandate to work precedes the fall of man and woman. In fact, the Genesis account of creation presents the creation of the world as a divine work accomplished in six mystical days. God rested on the seventh day, which he made a sabbath day for rest. Thus, God worked in his own divine way to bring the world and all it holds into existence. After creating man and woman, he instructed them to take charge of the entire material creation and the Garden he had planted for their well-being. They were supposed to cultivate the land and govern the whole creat...

FEAST OF OUR LADY, MOTHER OF AFRICA    Acts 1:12-14; Lk 1:46-55; Lk 1:26-38  The Source of Peace and Harmony The Church in Africa sets aside this last day of April to celebrate the feast of Our Lady, the Mother of Africa. As we celebrate the feast, we reflect on the situation of Africa as a continent. Remembering various parts of Africa that are still engrossed in war, poverty, hunger, diseases, and civil unrest. All these maladies are due to human sins and greed. A large population of people in many nations of Africa suffer and die daily because the few who control their wealth and power do not know how to use them to make the lives of their people better. We suffer many personal and social evils because we have failed to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ wholeheartedly. Many who enter the Church or profess Christianity do so for their own personal gains and not to truly serve God and do his will. As we noted in our previous reflection, the source of sin and evil ...

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA, VIRGIN, DOCTOR    1 Jn 1:5-2:2; Ps 103:1-4,8-9,13-14,17-18; Mt 11:25-30  The Knowledge of the Father The Son of God took our human nature to make known to us the goodness of the Father, which is hidden from us. The goodness of God the Father seems hidden to us because of our sins. Sin has turned our minds and hearts away from God and fixated them on the earth and the passing things of this world. As Saint John informed us in his first letter, familiarity or friendship with the world is enmity with God. Cf. 1 Jn 3:15. The goodness of God is always visible everywhere to those with spiritual eyes; it is only invisible to carnal eyes. Thus, the coming of the Son of God in human nature is to reveal the goodness of the Father to all in a more concrete way. The central revelation of the Son of Man is the revelation of God as our heavenly Father. By purifying us of sin through his death and giving us a new birth by his resurrection, he has given us ...

SAINT LOUIS MARIE GRINION DE MONTFORT, PRIEST    Acts 11:19-26; Ps 87; Jn 10:22-30 The Joy of Redemption The Jewish converts to faith in Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, initially did not comprehend the depth of the mysteries of the Lord. In fact, none of us fully comprehends these mysteries, which await the beatific vision for their full comprehension. Not understanding that the Good News of the Lord’s resurrection is meant for the whole world, they restricted their preaching to the Jews. Even the apostles were not clear on this aspect. They had some Gentile converts in their preaching ministry in Jerusalem, but probably thought that they were exceptions made by God for what he meant for the Jews. They may have misinterpreted the Lord’s intentional restriction of his preaching to a Jewish audience during his earthly ministry. But that was in fulfilment of the scriptures foretelling the rejection and killing of the Son of Man by the Jews. Their betrayal was meant to liberat...

MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 11:1-18; Ps 42:2-3,43:3-4; Jn 10:11-18 I Am the Good Shepherd The Son of Man, in his discourse on the Good Shepherd, presents himself as the Shepherd of mankind and not just of the Jewish race. Hence, he called himself the gate of the sheepfold. He gives life to all men and enlightens every man that comes to existence, as Saint John informs us in the prologue to the Gospel. He is the gate of the sheepfold, for he is the model of our human nature. He is acclaimed as the perfect image of the Father. As the model, no one can understand human nature without passing through the Son of Man, for in him our nature is perfect. The perfection of human nature, which is found in him, and the pure illumination of our nature in him, make him the Shepherd of all. So, all men are contained in his fold by the default of their nature. Whoever is found to be outside of the fold puts himself outside by his disobedience of the Shepherd’s voice. ...

SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 2:14,36-41; Ps 23; 1 Pet 2:20-25; Jn 10:1-10 I Am the Gate of the Sheepfold We celebrate the fourth Sunday of Easter as the Good Shepherd Sunday. By this celebration, the Church leads us deeper into the Messianic role of the Son of Man. The Eternal Word assumed our human nature in order to save us from sin, death, and evil, and to restore us to the eternal dwelling that God prepared for us. This is the core content of the celebration. The celebration presents this content using the analogy of the Shepherd and the sheep. The illumination of this analogy is important for our understanding of the celebration. The fact that we are rational creatures of God makes us his own in every ramification. Though he made us rational, we are conceived and born in ignorance of God and the divine truths necessary for our eternal well-being. The disobedience of our first parents placed additional stumbling blocks or difficulties on our path to acqu...

FEAST OF SAINT MARK, EVANGELIST    Pet 5:5-14; Ps 89:2-3,6-7,16-17; Mk 16:15-20 Vocation to feed the People with Jesus Christ Remaining spiritually young and agile depends on what we feed our spirits. Since the maintenance of a thing of nature usually comes from the same principle that gave it existence, the word of God that gave us spiritual life also sustains it. We obtained spiritual life through believing in the resurrection of the Son of Man, which we confessed at our baptism. The same confession of faith in the Risen Lord makes us grow in our spiritual life. This confession of faith in the resurrection of the Lord is ritually expressed when we receive the Lord in the Eucharist. Our reception of the Sacrament of his body and blood, includes his soul and divinity. We can receive the Sacrament, the bread and wine, without faith, but the reality of his body and blood, his soul and divinity we definitely cannot receive without faith. If, therefore, we believe in hi...

FRIDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 9:1-20; Ps 117; Jn 6:52-59 Eating the Flesh and Drinking the Blood of Jesus Christ What causes us not to eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man? Understanding the sacramental nature of creatures and creation as a whole, we see that the problem is not that we are not eating the body and drinking the blood of the Son of Man; we are eating and drinking without recognising the reality we are feeding on. Because we eat these creatures, structured into a rational path leading to divine truth and revelation, without walking the path of reason they present to us, and the spiritual path hidden behind their sacramentality, we fall short of eating his flesh and drinking his blood. When we interact with creatures without hearing the voice of God through them or seeing God through them, we misuse them and fail to follow the path they point out to us for God. It was to bring the consciousness of his disciples to his abiding pr...

THURSDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 8:26-40; Ps 66:8-9,16-17,20; Jn 6:44-51 Freedom from Darkness of Error The nature of each creature of God is a certain law which represents the will of God that brings and sustains it in existence. So, the operation of the nature of a thing expresses the will of God for its existence and divine purpose for it. In all creation, we see that each nature has intrinsic and extrinsic bearings. In the former, it maintains the inherent structure of the thing, and in the latter, it relates and corroborates with other natures in the maintenance of a certain stable equilibrium in the universe. This web of relations and correlations of natures reaches its highest complexity in humans. The entire material universe works together to support the human person, made in the image of God. The Scriptures teach us that God created the entire world for the benefit of humanity. But both the human persons and the material universe that God created...

WEDNESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 8:1-8; Ps 66:1-7; Jn 6:35-40 I Have Come to Do the Father’s Will As we reflected on, the will of the heavenly Father is the daily bread we are invited to eat. Jesus is our real food and drink, for He represents the will of God for us. This is what the kingdom of heaven is essentially: doing the will of God. There are myriads of angels in heaven, but there is only one will in the whole of heaven; that is, the will of the Father. The holy and immutable will of God the Father is what makes heaven a complete joy and happiness. God is infinitely good and pours all his goodness into his divine will. Since the will of God expresses the infinite goodness of God, there is no other thing more exquisite and attractive than the holy and immutable will of God. Hence, the Son is totally dedicated to doing the will of the Father and completely represents the will of God the Father. Everything in creation shows forth a little aspect of th...

TUESDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 7:51-8:1; Ps 31:3-4,6,8,17,21; Jn 6:30-35 The Father Gives the Heavenly Bread All who are born of water and the Holy Spirit have the life of heaven or spiritual life. This life was not possible before the passion and death of Jesus Christ, because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Hence, no one could discern the things of heaven or possess heavenly life, for no one came from heaven to reveal God or make his will known here on earth. The Only Begotten Son of God assumed human flesh and lived among us that he might teach us about the Father and reveal the holy will of God to us. The revelation would have no effect if all the children were in bondage to sin and enslaved to the evil one. A slave does not own himself and therefore cannot give himself to another master when he is the slave of another. The only way open to a slave to escape the bondage of his evil master is rebellion, which leads to the death of...

MONDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 6:8-15; Ps 119:23-24,26-27,29-30; Jn 6:22-29 Working for Spiritual Food The Easter celebration renews Christians’ spiritual youthfulness, as it is the celebration of our spiritual birth. At the celebration of the Lord's resurrection, the Church gives birth to many children, whom she gradually nurtures into the likeness of the man of heaven, and leads them on the path of eternal life. The Church gives birth to a multitude of children through water and the Holy Spirit, making men subjects of the kingdom of heaven. She is able to do this because of the presence of the Risen Lord within her. As the mystical body of Jesus Christ, the Church makes the Risen Lord present to her children, who are marked by their faith in the Son of Man, through the celebration of the paschal mysteries. These paschal mysteries of the Lord are the sources of the spiritual life she gives to her children and sustains in them. By her proclamation of the G...

SUNDAY, THIRD WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 2:14,22-33; Ps 16:1-2,5,7-11; 1 Pet 1:17-21; Lk 24:13-35 Renewing Our Spiritual Youthfulness in Christ Our Easter celebration ought to renew our spiritual youthfulness, for it is when the Church puts these paschal mysteries before us anew. The mysteries themselves are ever new, for they contain eternal truths and goods which they make available to us through the Church’s liturgical celebrations. They are the mysteries of Jesus Christ, who has entered his eternal glory through his resurrection from the dead. By these mysteries that he entrusted to the Church to hold and celebrate for all ages to come, he makes her fruitful and renews her in the Holy Spirit. The mysteries are old in the passage of time and in their symbols, but remain new in their contents, which are ageless. We see the fruitfulness which Christ endows his Church in the number of her children baptised and joined the ranks of the faithful during Easter. The cele...

SATURDAY, SECOND WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 6:1-7; Ps 33:1-2,4-5,18-18; Jn 6:16-21 The Son of Man Walking on the Waters The union of the human nature with the divine nature in the Son of Man is the ideal that prompted God to create man in the first place. According to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, the first in a genus is the principle in that genus. Adam was the first man made with the image of God, but the Son of Man is the first man perfected in the likeness of God. Since the making of man in the likeness of God is the end or purpose of our creation, the first man in the likeness of God is the principle of all others who would be made into the likeness of God. Saint Paul explained this mystery in 1 Cor 15: 46-48 “The spiritual, however, was not first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so also are those who are of the earth; and as is the heavenly man, so also ...