Reflection from Friar Nicholas

ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, BISHOP, MARTYR Eph 1:1-10; Ps 98:1-6; Lk 11:47-54 God blessed us with heavenly Wisdom in Christ We commence reading the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians as we celebrate the memorial of St. Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch. In this letter, St. Paul expounded on the mysteries and riches of God offered us in Jesus Christ. Here, we see the outline of the Wisdom of God, in which he ordered everything he created to himself through Jesus Christ. Hence, we refer to Jesus Christ as the Eternal Wisdom. All things were made and ordered back to God the Father through the Eternal Word of God. The unfathomable gift of the Father to us in Jesus Christ forms the theme of the opening of the letter which is more like a hymn of thanksgiving to the Father. It says that the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heaven by giving us his Beloved Son. “Blessed be God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with all the spiritual blessings of hea...

WEDNESDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gal 5:18-25; Ps 1:1-4,6; Lk 11:42-46 Living by the Spirit of Wisdom and Love We have understood the impossibility of a human person fulfilling the Commandments of God as coming from the fact that our human nature was turned away from God by the original sin of Adam and Eve. The Commandments cannot save man without the Spirit to regenerate the fallen nature. God never meant his Commandments to save man but to show man how dead he was in sin. Therefore, St. Paul explains how a Christian can live above the Law because of the Holy Spirit of adoption through our faith in Jesus Christ. “If you are led by the Spirit, no law can touch you.” The reason is that by our profession of faith and baptism into the death of Jesus Christ, we are declared dead, which is what the ritual demonstrates. Our life after baptism is in Jesus Christ and in communion with the Holy Spirit, which he sends into our hearts for adoption. The indwelling Holy Spirit re...

ST TERESA OF AVILA, VIRGIN, DOCTOR Gal 5:1-6; Ps 119:41,43-45,47-48; Lk 11:37-41 The Power of Faith working through Love As we celebrate the memorial of St. Teresa of Jesus, as she is popularly known, we revert to St. Paul’s stress on faith as the path leading to the salvation Jesus Christ won for us through his life, death, and resurrection. In today’s passage, he continues with the theme of freedom and slavery. Our faith in Jesus Christ brings us to the freedom of the Spirit of God. This freedom is definitive of the Christian life because it is not essentially a human life but a participation in the life of God through the Holy Spirit we have received by our profession of faith in Jesus Christ. Freedom is the freedom of the Eternal Wisdom through which God created all things. Participation in the Eternal Wisdom is a sharing of the divine life and power. We can embrace this power only because God offered it to us in the incarnation of the Eternal Wisdom. Our admittance into the ...

MONDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gal 4:22-24,26-27,31-5:1; Ps 113:1-7; Lk 11:29-32 The Presence of Eternal Wisdom As a follow-up to Sunday’s reflection on the gift of Wisdom, in which we noted the difference between the Old Testament understanding of Wisdom as embodied by the Commandments, different from the New Testament initiated by the incarnation of the Eternal Wisdom, we follow St. Paul to a deeper understanding of this difference. In today’s passage from Galatians, he presents all who lived in the Old Testament dispensation as having lived in slavery. The Old Testament was when sin reigned supreme over all due to the presence of the Commandments. Though the Commandments were regarded as the epitome of divine Wisdom, able to guide human life into communion with God, the human spirit has been vitiated by original sin. So, no man satisfies the requirements of the Law. Hence, even Solomon, granted wisdom and understanding, abandoned the path of wisdom because he coul...

SUNDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Wis 7:7-11; Ps 90:12-17; Heb 4:12-13; Mk 10:17-30 Desiring Union with Wisdom The first reading from the Book of Wisdom is Solomon’s appreciation of Wisdom as the most important gift of God. We must take these words of King Solomon very seriously because God endowed him with many gifts, and he singled out Wisdom for praise and exaltation. We must listen to him and take his words to heart. First, we learn that we must pray to God for the gift of Wisdom. By this, we understand that Wisdom is a gift we must ask God himself. Thus, the scripture tells us that wisdom begins in the fear of God. This heavenly gift will not find its way into our hearts if we do not regard God and give him the first place in our lives. The home of folly is in the hearts of those who do not know God as their Maker. Hence, the fool says in his heart that there is no God. This senseless conviction must be established in a heart for folly to make her home in such a he...

SATURDAY, TWENTY SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gal 3:22-29; Ps 105:2-7; Lk 11:27-28 The Blessedness of the Faithful Pual’s highlight of the role of the Law in our reception of the Gospel helped to bring the uniqueness of the blessing received by Christians to the fore. The Law, given to Moses to relay to the children of Israel, Abraham’s descendants, was a great privilege God gave them. Moses confirmed this privilege by telling them to keep the Law of the Lord because that would make them different and distinct from every other nation. All other nations would exclaim and acknowledge the uniqueness of the blessing of the Israelites when they witness the wisdom of the Law guiding their lives and their communion with God fostered by their obedience to the Law cf. Deut. 4:6-8. But this great and unique blessing bestowed on the children of Israel by the gift of the Law was not to separate them from the other men as such but to help make them ready for the gift of the ultimate salvatio...

FRIDAY, TWENTY SEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Gal 3:7-14; Ps 111:1-6; Lk 11:15-26 The fulfilment of the Promise made to Abraham After rebuking the Galatians for abandoning the gift God gave them due to their faith in Jesus Christ to seek another form of justification through obedience to the Law, Paul explains how their attempt to please God through the Law is doomed to fail. His line of argument is that they abandoned what God gave them free based on the faith they professed in Jesus Christ to seek the same thing through a means that would never yield any meaningful result. He returned to Abraham their father, who found favour with God. He showed that Abraham’s righteousness and subsequent blessing were not based on obedience to the Law, but rather on his faith in God’s word spoken to him. “Don’t you see that it is those who rely on faith who are the sons of Abraham? Scripture foresaw that God was going to use faith to justify the pagans, and proclaimed the Good News long ago whe...