Reflection from Friar Nicholas

FRIDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 25:13-21; Ps 103:1-2,11-12,19-20; Jn 17:20-26 The Spirit of Fear of the Lord The Holy Spirit also gives us the fear of the Lord as a gift. As Saint Paul wrote, we have not received a spirit of fear or timidity, but the Spirit that helps us cry ‘Abba, Father.’ Cf. Rom 8:15. The new birth we received from the Holy Spirit through our Lord Jesus Christ is the life of the Son of God, within us. So, our new spirit is able to call God Father, because it is begotten of God the Father and the means of our adoption as children of God. Through this new spirit, tutored and guided by the Holy Spirit, we develop a filial and reverential fear of God. Hence, the gift of the fear of the Lord is another spiritual support received from the Holy Spirit, aiding our transformation into Jesus Christ. We must never understand the fear here in the common usage of the word to mean being afraid or terrorised by another. The fear of the Lord flows out...

THURSDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 22:30,23:6-11; Ps 16:1-2,5,7-11; Jn 17:20-26 The Spirit of Understanding We arrive at truth through understanding, and truths offer us knowledge. The gift of understanding by the Holy Spirit is a spiritual support to our intellect, enabling us to grasp the mysteries of God and receive divine illumination on the things and events of life. The spiritual gift of understanding is key to our easy and successful journey into the mysteries of Jesus Christ. Our journey to the mountain of God is not a physical journey, like Elijah’s journey to Mount Sinai, but a spiritual journey into the mysteries of Jesus Christ. The gift of spiritual understanding enables us to penetrate the mysteries of God, human affairs, and situations. This gift, in a special way, renews the image of God in us, for it quickens the working of our rational faculty to see beyond the physical, to the foundations of things in God’s will. We must maintain purity ...

WEDNESDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 20:28-38; Ps 68:29-30,33-36; Jn 17:11-19 The Spirit of Wisdom The Christian vocation is to inherit a kingdom. As contained in the scriptures, we are called to inherit God through Jesus Christ. Thus, sharing the same Spirit with Jesus Christ, we are to reign with him in the kingdom of his Father forever. In his prayer to the Father, he requested the same glory that he is to receive from the Father for all of us who believe in his name. So, his gift of the Holy Spirit to us is in preparation for the inheritance the Father has already granted us through the prayer and salvific work of the Son of Man. Thus, among the gifts of the Holy Spirit to us, wisdom is a special virtue for overseers. Wisdom is a kingly virtue that helps us direct all things to their proper end. To each of us is entrusted the kingdom of God that is within us; we are to trade everything to make it properly ours. The parable of our Lord confirms the vocat...

TUESDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 20:17-27; Ps 68:10-11,20-21; Jn 17:1-11 The Spirit of Fortitude The love of God the Father makes him give us his Son to save us from sin and evil, and his Holy Spirit to abide with us and bring us into communion with him. These gifts of the divine Persons are gifts beyond our imagination, through which we begin to estimate the love of the Father for us. Jesus especially referred to the Holy Spirit as the Gift from the Father. Cf. Lk 11:13. We have spiritual life when we receive the Holy Spirit, thanks to our Lord’s salvific works. The Holy Spirit, in order to properly strengthen and coordinate our spiritual life, which ought to overflow and oversee our natural life, gives us the seven gifts aiding our sanctification. We reflected on the gift of piety yesterday. Fortitude is the next gift of the Holy Spirit by which he solidifies our spiritual life. Through the gift of fortitude, the Holy Spirit gives us firmness in difficu...

MONDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 19:1-18; Ps 68:2-7; Jn 16:29-33 The Spirit of Piety One of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit is piety. The gift of piety is not irrelevant in our spiritual life and walk, for it is a virtue that deepens and strengthens our religious commitment to God. It usually arises from a deep knowledge of God gained through faith. Naturally, we do not know God. We do not understand his essence, which is beyond our comprehension. The little we know of God is usually through analogy, as in the use of metaphors by our Lord. We are made in the image of God, which is within us. But the image is dark without divine light. It is only in Jesus Christ that we see the divine image most illuminated by the divine light. Hence, the Son of Man is a mystery to our human gaze. The image is not what is outwardly given, but inwardly seen with the spiritual sight. None of us has his spiritual sight untarnished by sin. Hence, we need the Holy Spirit to give u...

SUNDAY, SEVENTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 1:12-14; Ps 27:1,4,7-8; 1 Pet 4:13-16; Jn 17:1-11 The Prayer of Our Lord Jesus Christ The readings express the yearning of the earth for the spiritual regeneration that the Father planned to accomplish for us. The deep yearning expressed by creatures is already a preparation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit comes to material creation that he brought into existence and sustains as a new beginning of a spiritual life for human beings. We lost our spiritual life with God when our first parents disobeyed the injunction of God not to eat of the forbidden fruit. Their disobedience, which denied them participation in the banquet of the Lord, served by his word, made them participants in the sinful communion of demons. That is what sin makes us, communicants in the cup of the devil. In his infinite mercy and compassion, God the Father promised us redemption through his Son, when He promised to bring forth another woman...

SATURDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 18:23-28; Ps 47:2-3,8-10; Jn 16:23-28 The Spiritual Nativity of a Christian The important role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian cannot even be imagined by our natural mind, because a natural man cannot comprehend spiritual matters. This was the topic and the cause of Nicodemus's bewilderment when he came to discuss with Jesus Christ at night. As we already know, the descent of the Holy Spirit into a person's soul marks the spiritual birth of that person in God. Without this new birth, discerning and comprehending spiritual matters is like discerning the direction of the wind, according to the Son of Man. Because the unregenerated mind cannot easily receive the unction of the Holy Spirit, he may succeed in knowing material reality well after much effort, and some part of the spiritual reality in a confused and disorderly manner through the visible creation. When the Holy Spirit gives a repentant soul spiritual life t...

FRIDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 18:9-18; Ps 47:2-7; Jn 16:20-23 The Birthing of a Heavenly Man We have vaguely explained the difficulty of transitioning from our earthly or natural life to a spiritual or heavenly life, abandoning our usual or natural way of living and doing things to adopt a spiritual way of thinking and living. Our explanation is vague because the reality is more complex than words can ever capture. Explaining the process of transition implies that we are all familiar with the way; however, that is not the case. The scripture says that anyone who is in Jesus Christ is a new creation, with the old creation gone. But many of us are yet to complete our transition into Jesus Christ. Because our resolutions to follow Jesus Christ are weak and short-lived, we come to life and die again, like the traditional Abikus or Ogbanjes , due to mortal sins not resolutely abandoned. We are not able to bring ourselves safely to birth in faith because of our inc...

SOLEMNITY OF THE ASCENSION OF THE LORD    Acts 1:1-11; Ps 47:2-3,6-9; Eph 1:17-23; Mt 28:16-20 Developing a Heavenly Mindset We have often written about our fixation with sensible things and the attractions of sensible life and pleasures. We are not really to be blamed as such, for the scriptures affirm that we are sinners through and through, conceived and born in sin. So, we have no knowledge of any other way to live our lives, apart from going after the sensible goods and pleasures. Hence, God takes his time to train souls he intends to work with, to imbue them with faith in the God they do not see nor perceive with their senses. The difficulty of this training for our sinful nature is confirmed by the sins and failures of the men of the Old Testament to please God. The decision of God to send his only Begotten Son in human nature is in consideration of this difficulty and in order to fit our salvation to our mode of living and acting. The Incarnation, which brought t...

WEDNESDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 17:15,22-18:1; Ps 148:1-2,11-14; Jn 16:12-15 Dwelling In God without Knowledge The risen Lord is always with us without our knowledge. In fact, he is with all men and women of goodwill, even when they do not know him yet, as we have posited in the previous reflections. Indeed, he is with all human persons, for we are all made in the image of God. The image of God we bear is essentially the risen Lord, notwithstanding the disfigurement of that image by our sins. The image of God in each of us is the way or path that God built in us to lead us back to Himself, who is our God and the last End. According to our Lord Jesus Christ, no one comes to the Son unless the Father draws him. The desire of the Father to draw all men to the Son is already evident in the fact that He created us in the image of His Son. The choice of the first parents and subsequently our choices to live in sin, is our decision not to walk on the path leading us...

TUESDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 16:22-34; Ps 138:1-3,7-8; Jn 16:5-11 Sharing in the Resurrection of the Lord We have understood the resurrection of the Son of Man or his glorification as his entrance into the glory of the Eternal Word. Though he was conceived with beatific vision and hypostatically united to the Person of the Son of God, that is to say that the human nature belonged to the Son of God, but the Son of Man, in his body, learnt obedience through suffering. In obedience, he was totally conformed to the will of the Father in the body he assumed, as he was in the divine nature he shares with the Father. Through his total obedience, the Son of Man deserved to share with us what he was given as a gift, namely, the glory of God. He opened the same way or path he travelled in his body for us. Thus, he informs us that he is the way, the truth, and the life. As we hinted in yesterday’s reflection, every person of goodwill sees the way leading to divine...

MONDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 16:11-15; Ps 149:1-6,9; Jn 15:26-16:4 You will be My Witnesses The Son of Man does not encounter us only when we hear the Gospel preached to us, but he calls us every day of our lives. We encounter the Son of Man within us, in the testimony of our rational nature. We have often explained how he is the perfection of our nature and therefore, everything good in us answers to him or draws us to him. We encounter him every day as we come to apprehend the created reality which contains his impression and speaks to us about God. We encounter him each time we understand and know a truth; for every truth echoes his voice, beckoning us to communion with him, and to a life in him. Every truth we know, embrace, and live out prepares us for his indwelling within us in spiritual life. Hence, the sheep of the Lord know him and recognise his voice even before they encounter him in the Gospel. The Son of Man made this declaration himself in ...

SUNDAY, SIXTH WEEK OF EASTERTIDE    Acts 8:5-8,14-17; Ps 66:1-7,16,20; 1 Pet 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21 Necessity of Love for the Risen Lord The major gain we receive from the resurrection of the Lord from the dead and glorification is that he is now the Lord of all. Glorified, he is present through the glory of God to every soul who desires him. This was why he declared to the apostles and disciples that they would benefit more from him when he was gone from them and back to the Father. Another major gain is that he would take care of our sins, which prevent us from participating in the life of God. Because his going is through the passion he was set to undergo in Jerusalem, his suffering and death would bring to perfection his offering or sacrifice of his life to accomplish the Father’s will and make our human nature acceptable to God once more. With his resurrection from death, the Son of Man reconnected human nature to God as it was created to be. Henceforth, any huma...

SATURDAY, FIFTH WEEK OF EASTER    Acts 15:22-31; Ps 57:8-12; Jn 15:12-17 Structure of Evil and Hatred We have acknowledged and described the presence of divine love in the created universe and in the human family that God instituted for the well-being of his children. The orderly structures in creation and in the family are a result of obedience to God’s word, which brings things into existence. Thus, the orderly structures propagate the presence of God through his word, upholding the structures and forming noble souls within and through them, both in creation and in the human family. Disobedience, on the other hand, which entered the universe through the disobedience of Adam and Eve, and became the seed of darkness and evil in them and their progenies, also produced its evil structures. The structures of sin, disobedience to divine will, emanating from man, work to obstruct the working of the divine structures or to obscure them by darkness and destroy man in the d...