GOD'S LOVE FOR US


THURSDAY, TWENTY NINTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Eph 3:14-21; Ps 33:1-2,4-5,11-12,18-19; Lk 12:49-53

God’s Unfathomable Love for Us

God is love, and those who believe in God and have received the Spirit of regeneration as his sons and daughters, witness to God's love through their lives. God is far from a soul when it lacks love. A soul lacks God’s love, which we are supposed to reflect like a mirror reflects light, not because God is not shining on it, but due to the soul’s spiritual corruption. When a mirror’s surface is rusted, it cannot reflect the rays of light that fall on it. Sin does the same thing to us; sinful carnal and worldly pleasures tarnish our souls’ ability to receive and reflect divine light and love. Often, what the world and proud worldlings peddle as love is corrupted and filthy, a very poor and sinful imitation of God’s love.  Hence, John 2:15-16 tells us not to love the world or desire the world’s pleasures. “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world.” Since the love we see in the world is not like God’s love, we should never desire it, because it corrupts our souls. A soul contaminated with worldly love is blind to God’s love because the two are generically different and opposed.

Jesus Christ redeemed us from the sin and corruption that the world calls love, which is essentially lust, through his blood shed on the Cross of Calvary. By the grace Christ won for us on the Cross, the Holy Spirit regenerates us spiritually to love as God loves. Saint Paul prays that we grow in this spiritual life through daily, regular feeding on the Father’s love, which Christ’s passion and death abundantly provided for us. “Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.” Our hidden self is our spirit, which the Holy Spirit generates in us through God’s love manifested in the passion, death, and resurrection of his Son. God’s love begins every true love and life; this makes God the origin of every fatherhood.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, who comes from the Father’s infinite love, bears witness to this unknowable love of God. His mission in the world is to reveal God’s infinite love to us and thereby give us new spiritual life by bringing us to participate in God’s love. “I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were blazing already! There is a baptism I must still receive, and how great is my distress till it is over!” The new spiritual life we have received is the fire our Lord mentioned. His death and resurrection kindle the fire within us; our meditation and contemplation of the paschal mysteries make the fire blaze within us. Our Lord wanted the fire to blaze in each of us, so that we may set the world ablaze with the fire of God’s love. The world is on fire with a contrary fire of lusts of the flesh and eyes; we must be ablaze with God’s love to make the desired impact on souls immersed in the worldly corruption. These contrary loves cause opposition and conflict between children of God and those of the world. “Do you suppose that I am here to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division.” Because God’s love is gendered and nourished in the sacred passion of our Lord, our Eucharistic celebration ought to nourish and fan our love for God into flame to counter the world and its lusts. “For the word of the Lord is faithful and all his works are to be trusted. The Lord loves justice and right and fills the earth with his love.”

Let us pray: Almighty ever-living God, grant that we may always conform our will to yours and serve your majesty in sincerity of heart. 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. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

GOD IS LOVE

Image
SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST SACRED HEART OF JESUS   Deut 7:6-11; Ps 103:1-4,6-8,10; 1 Jn 4:7-16; Mt 11:25-30 Great Things hidden from the Wise We celebrate the solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ. The Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ is a mystery, as coming from the mystery of the Son of Man. The human heart of Jesus Christ is a symbol and reality of the love of the Son of Man for his brothers and sisters. It is a human representation of the heart or love of the Son of God for us, his own people and creatures. As he revealed in Heb 2:14, that he took on our nature, that he may share everything in common with us. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death.” The Father brought us into existence to be the inheritance and the companions of His Beloved Son. The love of the Son for his own could not let him be, but made him take on our nature and appear among ...
Read more

CALLED TO KNOW AND PROCLAIM THE GOSPEL

Image
THE CONVERSION SAINT PAUL, APOSTLE Acts 22:3-16; Ps 117; Mk 16:15-18 Proclamation of the Gospel of the New Covenant Celebrating the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul brings us to a deeper reflection on the meaning and implication of the new covenant in Jesus Christ. As Paul himself narrated in the first reading to his people in Jerusalem, he was so zealous in the practice of Judaism, the religion of his fathers, that his eyes were closed to the new realities and relations God had brought into existence. Though these new realities and relations were prophesied by the prophets and the Law pointed to them, Paul and many of his contemporaries were blind to them. His words are: “I am a Jew and was born at Tarsus in Cilicia. I was brought up here in this city. I studied under Gamaliel and was taught the exact observance of the Law of our ancestors. In fact, I was as full of duty towards God as you are today.” These words of Paul testify that zeal without the knowledge of the will o...
Read more

ESTABLISHING OURSELVES IN HIS PRESENCE

Image
THE 6TH DAY OF OCTAVE OF CHRISTMAS     1 Jn 2:12-17; Ps 96:7-10; Lk 2:36-40 Recognising the Incarnate Word for Self The Church, in the opening prayer, prays for the new revelation of God in the flesh to commence its purpose of setting us free from the bondage of sin and servitude to evil. The fact of the Incarnation means that human nature is redeemed in principle, by God joining it to the Eternal Word in a hypostatic union. The Lamb, the Word in human flesh, is already sacrificed to God, waiting for the consummation of the sacrifice on Calvary. Thus, He already started the work of redemption in principle, each of us must now appropriate the result of the redemption. The purpose of his appearance in human flesh is that he may enter our minds as God, who created us in love. He comes to receive us back into his company; this requires he enters the temple within each of us. We must recognise what he has already done for the love of us and respond in a similar gesture b...
Read more