Reflection from Friar Nicholas

FEAST OF SAINT LUKE, EVANGELIST   2 Tim 4:10-17; Ps 145:10-13,17-18; Lk 10:1-9 Remaining Consistent in Grace We have described God’s gift of graces as coming in a cycle of prevenient, actual, and thanksgiving graces. The grace of God does not come in cycles alone, but also in a consistent and frequent manner. Because the grace of God is His presence and holy will, given to us, it flows like a stream into us, to sustain our relationship and interaction with Him. Picturing the grace of God as a stream is consistent with Scripture. We see the consistency of God’s grace presented as a stream of water flowing from the divine fountain both in the Old and New Testaments. Our Lord himself used the image to refer to the Holy Spirit within the believers in the Gospel of John, chapter 8. We hardly experience this consistency of grace in our lives. Our inability to experience the consistency of grace is not from God, but from ourselves. The problem is our failure to consistently ful...

SAINT IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, BISHOP, MARTYR   Rom 4:1-8; Ps 32:1-2,5,11; Lk 12:1-7 Avoiding the Yeast of Pharisees The root of hypocrisy is the desire to present to others qualities that are not genuinely ours. It is the desire to appear better than we really are to others. Hence, there is a saying that hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue. It arises from the desire of vice to dress itself in the borrowed garb of virtue. A hypocrite desires to deceive, which makes it evil and of the evil one. We are not truly converted when this yeast is present in us, for conversion is a sincere acknowledgement of our sinfulness before God and man. Hypocrisy is born from a desire to evade the grace of conversion, which we have called a prevenient grace. If we evade the prevenient grace, we equally evade the actual grace which follows it and occasions our encounter with Jesus Christ and declaration of faith in him. The implication of evading the prevenient and actual graces is our inabili...

THURSDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 3:21-30; Ps 130:1-6; Lk 11:47-54 The Grace of Thanksgiving and Sacrifice After the actual grace which follows the prevenient grace, we reflect on the grace of thanksgiving or the sacrificial grace. The sacrificial grace completes the motion that started with God, for the accomplishment of every good work. As we stated earlier in the week, God is the cause of all good things; it means that nothing good begins without Him initiating it. Every good thing also ends in Him, and for his glory. His gift of prevenient grace progresses to actual grace and culminates in the sacrificial grace of thanksgiving. The grace of thanksgiving helps us to offer a proper thanksgiving to God, through Jesus Christ, for using or enabling us to accomplish a good work through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thanksgiving is a symbol of the gift of ourselves to God, corresponding to God’s self-communication to us in His Son, Jesus Christ. Our thanksgiving or self-sac...

SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, VIRGIN, DOCTOR Rom 2:1-11; Ps 62:2-3,6-7,9; Lk 11:42-46 The Insufficiency of Prevenient Grace What comparison can we make of prevenient grace and actual grace? We must proceed from the fact that God made us for himself, and He alone can bring us to participate in divine life; that is, to be like him. We are not passive in God’s transformative work of making us like God; we are active participants through our spiritual faculties. Therefore, prevenient grace is necessary to bring us to an awareness of God’s will, as beneficial for us. It fosters a willingness to do God’s will in us. It is not sufficient to make us realise or accomplish the divine will. Actual grace enables us to cooperate with God in accomplishing His divine will. It is one thing for a child to want to take a bath, and entirely a different thing for it to wash itself clean. Its willingness is needed for it to cooperate with the mother or father, who intends to wash the baby. If we are open, t...

TUESDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 1:16-25; Ps 19:2-5; Lk 11:37-41 Our Evasion of Grace The divine purpose for creating us demands that he make his grace abundant for us, that we may attain the end for which He made us. God never failed in this duty of provision of abundant grace for man to know, love, and serve God. Our nature and the intention of God to make us like himself demand that we pay attention to the abundant grace of God and make a personal choice to attend to God, know him, and serve him. Consider the abundance of prevenient grace contained in the instruction: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat it you shall die.” Lack of attention to the word of God prevented them from eating of the many good trees in the garden, thereby hindering their advancement in the knowledge of God and His will. The word of God provides many latitudes or degrees of freed...

MONDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME Rom 1:1-7; Ps 98:1-4; Lk 11:29-32 The Sign of the Son of Man God understands us completely as the work of His hand. He knows that attention is a big problem for us, especially in our fallen state. So, He put structures within us and outside that would signal to us the coming of disaster due to our choices, actions, and inactions. These signs call our attention to a forthcoming destruction that lies in our chosen course of action or inaction. God is infinitely just and merciful; he would not put options before us without letting us know the possible outcome of each choice we make. These revelations and signs are part of the prevenient grace, or the grace that comes before the actual grace. Even before the first fall of Adam and Eve, God gave them His word and the outcome that would follow their rejection of the Word of Life. He informed them they would know death the day they tasted the fruit that was forbidden to them. Vigilance is requ...

SUNDAY, TWENTY EIGHTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME 2 Kings 5:14-17; Ps 98:1-4; 2 Tim 2:8-13; Lk 17:11-19 Abiding in Good Works The Church prays in the opening prayer for God to anticipate us with His grace, and for the same grace to follow us thereafter. The ordinary course of things or divine action with us is that God anticipates us with his grace, for nothing moves without God moving it. Since God moves us in all things, he sends his grace to anticipate us. To respond to the anticipatory grace requires that we be in the state of grace and have a life that is commensurable or connatural with God. The Holy Spirit remains with us for this purpose: that we may develop a divine sensibility, enabling us to respond to God’s inspiration supernaturally and easily. The commensurability or spiritual sensibility is what our new spirit stands for, and defines when we develop it. Just as a natural baby grows and develops with constant nourishment and exercise of its faculties, our spirit grows a...