THE FOUNDATION OF SPIRITUALITY


SATURDAY, EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME     

Jude 1:17,20-25; Ps 63:2-6; Mk 11:27-33

Building on the Holy Foundation of Faith

On the day of our baptism, a lit candle was given to us to signify the spiritual light our faith in Jesus Christ has brought into us. The same ritual is repeated every year at the Easter Vigil Mass. The repetition ensures that those baptised as infants have the opportunity to own the faith their parents and Godparents professed in their place during their baptism. The solemn profession of faith in the Triune God and rejection of Satan and his lies is repeated. Another reason we repeat this ritual every year is to remind ourselves of the solemn profession of faith in the Risen Lord and to renew our spiritual life by celebrating the mysteries through which we were given new life. The Easter celebration of the Paschal mysteries offers us the opportunity to re-comprehend our faith in the Risen Lord and thereby solidify the foundation of our spiritual life. We are to build our lives henceforth on these mysteries. Since these mysteries are otherworldly, it means the mainstay of our lives ought to be the spiritual world or realities. As we reflected yesterday, frequent and consistent dwelling on these spiritual and stable realities stabilises our lives lived amidst the temporal and transitory things of this world. Sinking our minds and hearts deeply into these sources of grace enables our lives to remain green, leafy, and fruitful through all the seasons of the physical and spiritual year.

The Apostle Saint Jude reminds us of how to establish our lives beside the running stream of divine grace. “Remember, my dear friends, what the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ told you to expect. You must use your most holy faith as your foundation and build on that, praying in the Holy Spirit; keep yourselves within the love of God and wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to give you eternal life.” He summarised what we explained above. Every action must be founded on our faith in Jesus Christ, for it to contribute to the building of our lives into a spiritual edifice for God. Constant prayer ensures the spiritual rooting of our actions, for it is the act and art of prayer that sustains the flame of love of God in our souls. Devout prayers keep our spirits alive and active before God, in constant communion with the Holy Spirit. Connected constantly with the Holy Spirit, he pours the love of God into our spirits, minds, and hearts, thereby causing us to yearn more for God and union with him. The Psalmist expresses this yearning as follows. “O God, you are my God, for you I long; for you my soul is thirsting. My body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water.” As in the beginning, where the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters, his presence in us causes our wintry, sinful nature to dry up, and thirst for the heavenly dew of grace and love of God.

Our houses or souls are made for this blessed end. God created us to be His holy temple, housing His Sacred and Eternal Word and Holy Spirit. Our sinful gravitation towards creatures and hunger for sinful pleasures caused the swamping of our souls with the putrid waters of sin. The Lord’s cleansing of the Temple in Jerusalem, which we read yesterday, shows his right to own our souls, minds, and hearts. He reminded us yesterday of the purpose of our houses or souls. “Does not scripture say: My house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples? But you have turned it into a robbers’ den.” In today’s Gospel, the chief priests, scribes, and elders, who found his actions and words deeply meaningful, demanded to know his authority for doing what he did. Do we not act like them when we take offence at God for disrupting our misdirected lives and engagements with trials, persecutions, sufferings, etc? Even the holy Job wanted to know why God would treat him with so much suffering and pain. The Son of Man has every right to cleanse our houses, which are his inheritance, and return them to their original purpose of prayer and thanksgiving. Let us return our minds and hearts to God, and therein, gaze on him as in the sanctuary; we will discover his strength and glory, his love that is better than life.

Let us pray: Grant us, O Lord, we pray, that the course of our world may be directed by your peaceful rule and that your Church may rejoice, untroubled in her devotion and her children fruitful in good and charitable works. Through our Lord Jesus, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.  

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