Reflection from Friar Nicholas

WEDNESDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT    Isa 49:8-15; Ps 145:8-9,13-14,17-18; Jn 5:17-30 The Son of Man raises the Dead The joy of salvation is exceedingly great in those who have received the word of God truly as the word of God, and not some human thinking or fabrication. What the word of God announces to us is beyond this world; only the believers can comprehend the meaning of the word they receive because the Holy Spirit has given them a new capacity to receive and comprehend spiritual things. By sending His Son in human nature, God has given us a new spiritual birth in the Son. The new birth is the spiritual life we have in common with the Son of Man. So, we are one with the Son of Man spiritually, but many by our material bodies. Thus, what is said of the Son of Man applies to all who constitute his body by their share in His Spirit. Our share in the Spirit of the Son increases as we reorient our minds and hearts to become like His. Since the Spirit defines a desire and o...

SAINT PATRICK, BISHOP    1 Pet 4:7-11; Ps 96:1-3,7-8,10; Lk 5:1-11 The Sacraments and Reality of God The spiritual renewal of all things in Jesus Christ, as we noted in previous reflection, makes the visible or material universe a sacramental universe. Each thing in the universe acquires a new meaning or role in the vocation of the human person to God. The vocation of the human person to God, which is not a new vocation, shines forth more clearly through the Incarnation of the Son of God and his dwelling among us. All of us who have discovered our true identity and mission in Jesus Christ put our minds and hearts in spiritual things, rather than in temporal things. In Jesus Christ, we come to know the true meaning of our life here on earth. Our life on earth is a time of transformation into Jesus Christ, or a time to become like God. The word of God, personified in Jesus Christ, is the means of our transformation. Thus, our Christian vocation is to follow him in all...

MONDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT    Isa 65:17-21; Ps 30:2,4-6,11-13; Jn 4:43-54 The Wonder of the New Creation The spiritual recreation of the human person is something stupendous. Although there is a way to consider it a new creation, and another way to consider it a recreation of the human person. In the former view, the mission of the Son of God in human nature is a new creation, for it is a realisation of what was not there before. By our nature, which is rational, God is in us; for God is in all things by their respective natures. However, as we explained in our previous reflection, among material creatures, the human person stands out due to the rationality of our nature. Our rational nature was created as a dwelling place of God in a unique way; it contains God in a way different from the common way every other nature contains Him. Our rationality enables us to contain God on a personal level; that is, as the object of our act of knowing and loving. The divine nat...

SUNDAY, FOURTH WEEK OF LENT    1 Sam 16:1,6-7,10-13; Ps 23; Eph 5:8-14; Jn 9:1-41 The Light that enlightens All Thing God made us from the beginning to be light or Light bearers. This is another way of saying that God intends us to be like Him. God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all. He communicates his light to creatures through His Word. Therefore, the fact that He created all things through His Word implies that every creature contains the light of God within it. The light in created things is their truth by which they share in God’s light or existence. God is existence; Hence, He introduced Himself to Moses as ‘I Am.’ Exodus 3:15. Everything in existence shares in God’s light and truth through the word of God that brings things into existence. Rational creatures also participate in the light of God through their existence. But they have a greater capacity for participation in God through their rational nature, by which they receive God by a deliber...

SATURDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT    Hos 5:15-6:6; Ps 51:3-4,18-21; Lk 18:9-14 Our Spiritual Vocation to God Man is a mystery in relation to God. As we have often stated, this mystery originates from the divine will to make man in the divine image and likeness. Hence, each of us is lost in the mystery of self-discovery or self-knowledge. The mystery bears many facets: biological, psychological, and spiritual. We encounter its most complicated aspect in our attempts to understand our moral selves. The complications arise from the confluence of psychological and spiritual streams within our individual awareness, which is often outside our personal control. This feeling of inadequacy in our innermost self to handle our moral weakness and bankruptcy is the original call or vocation to religion. It is the consequence of the disobedience of our first parents, Adam and Eve, and our own personal disobedience to the word of God forbidding us from eating the fruit of the tree of knowle...

FRIDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT    Hos 14:2-10; Ps 81:6,8-11,14,17; Mk 12:28-34 The Communion of Love Because most of us were conceived and born in sin, raised up among sinful people, the awareness of God is not part of our constitutive and foundational awareness. We must strive to incorporate and grow in our awareness of God daily. After the fall of Adam and Eve from the state of pristine grace in which God created them, by which they abandoned the presence and the grace of direct awareness of God, God called Abraham with the intention of growing a people that would inherit what Adam and Eve abandoned by their own choice. The project of raising a people who would truly belong to God, not just by name, but in spirit and in truth, requires the free choice to believe and stay with God through the thick and thin of our sinful human conditions. The task before such people is to receive the word of God with faith and use it to build their worldview, within which they receive and i...

THURSDAY, THIRD WEEK OF LENT    Jer 7:23-28; Ps 95:1-2,6-9; Lk 11:14-23 Scattering by lack of Attention To believe in God is to desire to know Him and His divine will for us. Our profession of faith in God and in Jesus Christ does not align with our lack of attention to the Word of God. We cannot claim to profess faith in God and at the same time show no interest in knowing God’s will for us. By our rational nature, which God endowed us with at creation, we understand that we are structured to listen attentively to creation and to God. This is because everything around us and within us is well-structured and ordered for various purposes. So, to live in such a well-structured universe, man needs to pay close attention to creatures all around him to understand and follow the wisdom of the Creator. This is even more important in view of our role as stewards in the universe of creation, as God assigned us. Understood thus, we see that attentiveness ought to be our natur...