Reflection from Friar Nicholas

MONDAY, ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Cor 6:1-10; Ps 98:1-4; Mt 5:38-42 Our Faith Shines in Obedience and Submission Our reflection throughout the week will deepen our meditation on the Trinity, the three Persons of the Godhead. Since our original fall has weakened our natural capacity to know God in creation and through the events of our daily lives, our profession of faith in Jesus Christ as the Only Begotten Son of God in our human nature furnishes us a spiritual faculty and adequate grace to see God and discern his holy will in our daily lives. The Church asks for the grace for us to form a habit of following the will of the Father in all things. The needed grace comes to us through following the unction of the Holy Spirit, as he reveals the will of the Father in the daily course of our lives. Jesus Christ makes the grace abundant as part of the spiritual nutrients we receive from eating our daily bread, the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and the reality of his real presence ...

SOLEMNITY OF THE MOST HOLY TRINITY Prov.   8:22-31; Ps 8:4-9; Rom 5:1-5; Jn 16:12-15 The Trinity of Our Salvation The celebration of the solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity of Persons in God brings us to the core mystery of our salvation. It is the heart of the Christian revelation and the meaning of our salvation. The choice of readings for the celebration indicates the Church’s desire to guide us through the path of our experience in the meditation on this holiest of subjects. The Holy Trinity is our salvation because we are saved to the degree we understand and relate well to the three Persons in God. The doctrine of the Trinity was so obscure before the coming of the Son of God in human flesh. But after the Incarnation, the Son of Man opened our eyes to the reality of the Trinity everywhere, within and without. The foundational nature of this most holy doctrine is made evident in the fact that the Church, as the people of God, is founded and built on the Trinity. As the Sa...

SATURDAY, TENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Cor 5:14-21; Ps 103:1-4,9-12; Mt 5:33-37 We are New Creation in Jesus Christ The Father gave birth to our spirits in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Since God is life, our spirits, which are instantiations of Jesus Christ within us, are also life. Our new birth was made possible by the death of the Son of Man in obedience to the Father. Jesus ransomed us by his death for God the Father, who brings us to birth through his Eternal Word. Thus, our new birth is at the instance of our profession of faith in the death and resurrection of the Son of Man. The Word of the Father is Life and Spirit. Hence, Jesus is our spiritual life guided and nourished by the Holy Spirit, who has made his home in us for that purpose. The principle by which we come to spiritual life is the same principle that nourishes and causes our growth and development in spiritual life. Since the Holy Spirit gave us life, he must also guide every aspect of the heavenly li...

SAINT ANTHONY OF PADUA, PRIEST, DOCTOR 2 Cor 4:7-15; Ps 116:10-11,15-18; Mt 5:27-32 Our Faith brings us to Physical Death Let us recall again the principle of our spiritual life. We gained our spiritual life through our profession of faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By the faith we professed, the Holy Spirit gave us a new and spiritual life that is Christ in us. Because we believe that he died and rose again from the dead, he shares his spiritual and immortal life with us, just as he shared our mortal life, which he laid down at his death. The mortal life he shared with us, he laid down for the love of us and our salvation; the spiritual and immortal life he now has with the Father, he gives to us who believe in his resurrection. Since physical death was the gate through which the Son of man gained possession of the immortal life with the Father, the same death is the path of the increase of our participation in the spiritual and immortal life he shares with u...

THURSDAY, TENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Cor 3:15-4:1,3-6; Ps 85:9-14; Mt 5:20-26 The Removal of Veil of Unbelief The new spiritual birth we have received from the Holy Spirit makes us able to see and interact with spiritual realities. Without the spiritual life and its faculties received from the Holy Spirit, a soul is dead to God and other spiritual things. We have this in the passage from Saint Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. He judged many Jews ignorant of the spiritual realities God has revealed through Jesus Christ due to their lack of faith in Jesus Christ. Their refusal to believe in the Son of Man resulted in their turning away from the Spirit of truth and heavenly life. They misunderstood the Old Testament, which was supposed to lead them to Jesus Christ. “Even today, whenever Moses is read, the veil is over their minds. It will not be removed until they turn to the Lord. Now this Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” Their ...

SAINT BERNABAS, APOSTLE Acts 11:21-26,13:1-3; Ps 98:1-6; Mt 5:17-19 The Reward of Commitment to the Faith We celebrate the memorial of Saint Barnabas, the apostle. He was among the early converts to Christianity in Jerusalem. The scripture bears witness to his strong faith in the risen Lord, which is why the scripture describes him as filled with the Holy Spirit. As we have always noted, the Holy Spirit would be active in us to the extent we believe in Jesus Christ as the risen Lord. The faith of Barnabas was so great that he was one of the great people in the early Church in Jerusalem. We read that he sold his land and gave the entire proceeds to the apostles, who were in charge of the growing community. He is such a discerning man that he was sent to Antioch by the apostles to authenticate the many conversions of Gentiles to the Christian faith. “The church in Jerusalem heard about this and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. There he could see for himself that God had given grace, ...

T UESDAY, TENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Cor 1:18-22; Ps 119:129-133,135; Mt 5:13-16 You are Light of the World With the celebration of the Pentecost, we end the Eastertide and come back to the ordinary time of the Church. We come back to the ordinary with the extraordinary gift we have received from God. We come back to our ordinary daily activities, not to continue in our ordinary life and strength, but to pick up the ordinary tasks with extraordinary vision and enthusiasm, for what we now live is not the ordinary human life but the heavenly life of God. The renewal and deepening of our understanding of the paschal mysteries and the rekindling of our spiritual life by the Holy Spirit transform our daily tasks into a mission for the kingdom of God. If we have the Holy Spirit then we have God’s life within us. If we are unsure of his presence, then we are uncertain of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who redeemed us and restored us to good standing with God as his child...