God Has Made His Salvation Known (Ps. 98)

,In today's first reading, Romans 1: 1-7, St. Paul describes himself as follows:

• A slave of Christ Jesus
• One called to be an Apostle, that is given the grace of apostleship
• One set apart for the Gospel of God
• One who is to bring about the obedience of faith among the Gentiles for the sake of Jesus' name

Who am I? Who are you?  In one of the Gospels, Jesus says that He no longer calls us slaves but friends because He has shared everything with us that the Father had given to Him.  We are persons called to servant-hood as well as called to a relationship with the Most High, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God Himself.  What a noble vocation!. What a graced relationship!  By our servant-hood and our friendship with Jesus, we, like Paul, are commissioned to bring about the obedience of faith in others whom we encounter in life.

As we pray in the responsorial psalm, Psalm 98, of today's liturgy, "The Lord has made known his salvation" to us through the Gospels and those who preach the Gospels to us in word or in deed. We, in turn, by our calling to be God's servants and friends, make the Lord's salvation known to ourselves as well as to others.  All of this is possible because of the wondrous things God the Father has done through His Son, Jesus, whose "right hand has won victory for him, his holy arm. The Lord has made his salvation known: in the sight of the nations he has revealed his justice."

Lord, I think you for the wondrous things you have done and are doing in the lives of each of us!  Thank you for making your salvation known to me every single day of the year, in good times as well as in bad times, in every season of my life!  Thank  you for the call to be your servant and your friend.  Thank you for setting me apart and consecrating me to you in my baptism, confirming that gift in the sacrament of Confirmation and through any other sacrament that I am privileged to receive through your love for me. I offer this thanksgiving to you through Your Son,  Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.  Amen.

Oneness with God

In today's Gospel, John 17: 11b-19, Jesus, shortly before giving up His life to evil persons who killed Him, prayed for you and me.  His prayer, in part, was: "Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me."  You and I are included in the ones the Father gave to Jesus.  Jesus asked the Father to keep us in His name "so that [we] may be one just as [God the Father and Jesus] are one." Jesus reminded the Father that we "do not belong to the world any more that [He] belong[s] to the world. I do not," He said to His Father, "ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the Evil One....Consecrate them in the truth. Your word is truth....I consecrate myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth."

There is no way that the Father said "no" to His Son, Jesus. Jesus' prayer, definitely, is being answered day by day as we journey through this "vale of tears," where Satan prowls seeking souls to   devour.  "[K]eep them from the Evil One," Jesus prayed. And God does just that in and for those who seek God, a seeking obvious in those who practice their faith and live by truth. As we look around we see men and women becoming one in love, a possibility made real because Jesus prayed: "May they be one just as we are one."   The ability to give of ourselves in self-sacrificing love each day and the courage to rise when we fall and ask forgiveness of each other is the effect of Jesus' prayer!

May you and I rejoice in the abundant love and mercy that is poured into our lives each day by a gracious God working through our family and friends, fellow religious and creation itself.

"Behold, I come to do your will"

In today’s first reading, Heb. 10: 1-10, we read:  “First he [Jesus, Son of the Living God, the second person of the Blessed Trinity] says [to God the Father], Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings, you neither desired nor delighted in. These are offered according to the law. Then he [Jesus] says, Behold, I come to do your will. He takes away the first to establish the second. By this “will,”  we have been consecrated through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

In the Gospel, Jesus, indirectly,in stating that those who do the will of His Father are his mother, his brothers and sisters, praises his mother and brothers who are outside the house where Jesus is looking for him.

What an awesome God! What great love!  You and I, and all of creation, are consecrated to God once and for all by the sacrifice of Jesus, who offers His life and pours out His blood on the cross for our salvation.  Through Jesus’ obedience to the Father even onto death, we are placed on a path that leads to reconciliation with our God. We are on a course that leads to holiness, to oneness with the Father and the Son through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Love between the Father and the Son poured out upon us at the first Pentecost and all of the “Pentecosts” since that moment. God will allow nothing to throw us off course. His plan for our salvation will endure. “Heaven and earth will pass away but my word will not pass away” (Mk 13:31).

What a promise! I may stray, go off course, lose my way. Jesus doesn’t. He lives in me, having taken up His dwelling place in me when I was baptized and confirmed.  He continues to take up residence in me when I receive the Eucharist and “drink” at the Fountain of Living Waters, the Bible.  God is hidden in all of creation and in all of the events of my life and yours, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly, the orderly and the chaotic.  His presence is veiled from the naked eye. Only through faith do we recognize God shining through the darkness of this world and making all things right with the Father.

Praise God!