God Alone Saves

In yesterday's first reading, Isaiah 7: 10-14, God asked Ahaz to ask for a sign. He refuses to do so, thought his kingdom is in great jeopardy. A foreign nation is about to attack Israel and destroy its treasured possessions.  Ahaz himself had given into to worshipping pagan idols, even sacrificing one of his children to a foreign god.  Israel deflected, as had Ahaz.  Part of Israel's history is deflecting to foreign gods, not trusting God on their way to the Promised Land.  As with Adam and Eve, the Israelites abandoned their covenant with God, but God did not abandon His covenant with them, or with us.  When things looked bad,. Israel lost faith. 


In yesterday's Gospel, Joseph is confronted with a situation that looks as though everything in his life had gone terribly wrong: Mary is pregnant.  Joseph plans to divorce her quietly, hoping, no doubt, that she will not be put to death, a practice in his culture in the case of a woman who conceives a child out of wedlock.  At night in a dream an angel appears to Joseph and, in effect, says to him: "You got it all wrong, Joseph.  Mary was not playing around with another man nor was she raped.  The child in her womb was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. That child is the Son of God assuming human form and He will save His people from their sins.  Do not be afraid to take Mary into your home as your wife."


You and I live in a world where everything seems to have gone terribly wrong. Pagan gods are worshipped everywhere, it seems and in every country of the world and every nation!  People seek salvation from their misery and emptiness in consumerism, materialism, power, prestige, popularity, wealth, relativism (anything seems to go--corruption, deception, violations of law). GOD ENTERS, as in Joseph's life and says to us:  "You got everything wrong. Turn to me and away from your idolatrous ways and thoughts.  As with Ahaz, our "cities," our "treasures" will eventually be destroyed. They have no power to save us. We have no power to save ourselves. Only God can save! And God comes to us, not in fire, not in an earthquake, but as an infant baby who wins the hearts of all, as does any infant.  God comes to us hidden in the consecrated host at every Catholic Mass. He comes to save us from ourselves, from our deception, corruption, selfishness, sinfulness. GOD ENTERS QUIETLY, HUMBLY, COMPASSIONATELY AND, DECEIVINGLY, WITH GOD-POWER TO MAKE US HOLY IN HIS NAME AND FOR HIS SAKE!

A Blessed, Faith-filled Glorious Christmas

In today's first reading, Isaiah 52: 7-10, the prophet Isaiah burst forth with "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings glad tidings, announcing peace, bearing good news, announcing salvation and saying to Zion, 'Your God is King!'"  As we take time to ponder the crib, looking at the baby Jesus, may we realize that that tiny baby born in a filthy stable is "Your God and King," Christ the Lord, Creator of the Universe, your Creator and the Creator and of every human being who lives in this universe.  That tiny baby is God the Son, who becomes one like us in all things but sin.  That tiny baby is the only begotten Son of God, who leaves the glory of heaven and does not cling to equality with God but humbly becomes a human being.  That tiny baby is God, His glory and His Power hidden from us!

My mind is baffled by the truth that God also hides Himself from us and for us in the consecrated Host.  Yes, my faith tells me that God is hidden in this Sacred Bread--we do not see God in His glory or power, yet, in the Eucharist, I believe, God does come to us in all of His power and glory to transform us into Himself, purifying our hearts,  renewing our minds, reconciling us to the Father--making us one with the Trinity  and with one another--and, yes, strengthening our wills to follow His Way more faithfully.

I invite each of us, with Mary and Joseph, with all of the angels of God, with those who have preceded us into heaven, to meditate/ponder:

The humility of God in the infant Jesus.

The humility of God in the Sacred, consecrated Host and whom, I believe, we receive every time we receive Holy Communion during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!  What a privilege and what a grace!

The humility of God dwelling in each human being who is full of grace and continually cooperates with God's graces to do what is right and just, merciful and loving, compassionate and understanding!

Truly God is with until the end of time! With all of the angels in heaven and on earth we sing: Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will! Are you and I persons of good will?  If not, what needs to change?

Rejoice: The Lord is Near

We open today's liturgy with the antiphon: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near"(Phil 4: 4,5).

Each of us today awakened because the Lord called us to continue our existence here on earth. As we journey through this day, God will give us new opportunities to grow in grace and wisdom (growing in age is automatic); growing in grace and wisdom depends on our openness to God.  God, who entered the earth, coming down from heaven and being born as a helpless Infant, tender, loving, in need of care--the God who created the Universe and all that is in it, human, plant and animal--continues the act of Incarnation every day.  The Incarnate God exists within us, sustaining us in existence. The Incarnate God exists in all that has life. God's creative energies continue their creative gift of life in myriad of ways, including our own life as unique persons. God works with us and through us to become the persons God designed us to be. God patiently awaits our acceptance of our need to be saved; yes, our realization that we need redemption--God's mercy and love making us whole, making us increasingly more  pure and more authentic, more altruistic, more generous with time and talent in helping others; making us lavishly more loving, making us deeply more honest, even in the smallest of ways that we do not live up to our potential as human beings!

[R]ejoice  heartily in the Lord, in [your] God is the joy of [your] soul" (Isaiah 61: 1-2a, 10-11).

Jesus Becomes Poor for Us

"For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich so that by his poverty you might become rich."

Oh, the greatness of our God, who says to each one of us that He chose poverty--anything on this earth is poverty compared to living in eternity--so that you and I would become rich in grace. He left heaven for earth for each one of us. He took on human nature and all of its weaknesses, expect sin, to save us from eternal death. He assumed death at the hands of wicked men, knowing man's inhumanity to man so that you and I would be redeemed by His generous love, compassion, and mercy.

We recently witnessed a man being brought back to the States in a coma after 15 months of treatment that led to such a horrible fate. Every day, we witness man's inhumanity to man--beatings of toddlers to death because of a bed-wetting problem, children  and youth sold to human traffickers as sex slaves,  children starving to death because of greed that leaves a huge populations without the means to provide adequately for their families, persons condemned to hard labor for stealing a poster and other unjust sentences that leave individuals suffering cruel treatment, and on and on and on as government leaders pass legislation that favors the rich at the expense of the poor.

Jesus, the Son of God, assumes human nature to redeem it, to know human suffering at its worst--being tortured with the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and the crucifixion! Being condemned to death as an innocent man, He knows the pain of persons falsely imprisoned and falsely condemned, punished beyond reason for wrongs committed.  He knows man's lack of compassion and lack of mercy. He came to show us God compassion God's mercy, and  God's love.  Yes, Jesus "became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you [and I] might become rich" in mercy, love, and compassion in how we treat others and that man's inhumanity to man will someday be stopped!

God's Work within Me

Today’s readings, Ecclesiastes 3: 1-11 and Luke 9: 18-22, are breathtaking. Verses 11-12 of Ecclesiastes reads:  

“What advantage has the workers from their toil? I have considered the task
 that God has appointed for them to be busied about. God has made everything 
appropriateto its time, and has put the timeless into their hearts, without humans
 ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done”
 (inclusive language used by me). 

Notice the incredible humility of God in hiding from us the awesome work that the Holy One does in each one of us and in our lives every single day, from the beginning to the end of our lives!  Note, also, that it is God who “has appointed” for you and me what we are “to be busied about” while here on earth a short while.  And not only that, our Creator “has made everything [in your life and mine] appropriate to its time”.  Wow! How can I mistake that I belong to the Lord, that I have been created for His purposes? Am I willing to surrender the right to myself to God to be used for His eternal purposes in whatever way and wherever He wills?

The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that God “has put the timeless into our hearts.”  The Gospel enlightens us concerning this in the Son of God taking on human flesh.  Jesus tells the apostles that he will “suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”   God, in human form, will be killed and rise. Death will have no power over Him. With and in Jesus, we, too, will not be destroyed by death, any death. The Resurrection—the timeless--is in us, just as it was in Jesus. Yes, we are made in God’s likeness, in the likeness of Christ.

That means, that, through the power of Christ in me, I can resurrect from sin into holiness, from deceit into truth, from weakness into strength, from stupidity into wisdom and on and on to the point of rising from my physical death into resurrected life in eternity when my life on this earth comes to an end!

Do I believe this? Do I live life with this knowledge in the forefront of my mine? Do my human behaviors radiate both the divine and the human transformed by grace?  Do I, in truth, believe that resurrection is applicable, as well, to everything, to every one of my experiences to the very end of my life when I, too, leave this physical body?

A Reflection on Pentecost

Pleased God to give His only begotten Son to save us and through whom to send us the Spirit.

Every day God sends the Spirit to lead us to the truth.

Never does God stop loving us.

To this very moment God is imminent and intimately involved in every detail of our lives.

Especially in the midst of the turmoil of our lives, God is there to save.

Caringly, God watches over us.

Obediently, Jesus became sin for us that we might become the holiness of God in Him and through Him and with Him.

Standing by our side, the Trinity keeps us from the Evil One.

Truly, there is no God like our God, who complete Jesus’ mission with the sending of the Holy Spirit to be with us until the end of time.

The victory of justice

In today's first reading, Is. 42: 1-7, Isaiah prophesizes that Jesus “shall bring forth justice to the nations, [shall] bring out prisoners from confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness….I, the Lord, have called you for the victory of justice.” 

 

As yesterday we celebrated Palm Sunday, we read about the people loudly proclaiming Jesus as King, praising God for all the good that He had done in their midst. On Good Friday, we will hear those same people shouting for His death. He has disappointed them, as they were expecting a king who would restore their nation to greatness.  They felt betrayed and in their grief abandon Jesus to His executioners.

In today’s Gospel, Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with “a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard” and dries them with her hair” (Jn 12:1-11).  Amid Judas’ protests that that costly perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor—proclamations to cover up his hypocrisy and intent to steal the money later for personal use—Jesus tells Judas to leave the woman alone, that she is preparing his body for burial.  Jesus protects Mary, who, in her poverty and lowliness and out of great love expresses reverence and gratitude to the Lord for His forgiveness of her many sins.  That same reverence and love is shown to each of us by Jesus on Calvary, where “our feet” are washed in the blood and water that flows  from Jesus’ side. And as Jesus tells Peter when washing his feet that he is clean all over, so, too, He tells us that, "though our sins are scarlet, they will be white as snow" (Is 1: 16-18)!   On Calvary we will witness justice being done to the nations of the whole world, as we watch Jesus surrender His life to His Father.  In that act of obedience, we will be restored, not politically or according to worldly desires, but spiritually to friendship with the Father.  On Calvary we will witness  Jesus crush the head of Satan--the principalities and the powers of Satan that we will see at  work in Judas this week,  shall be destroyed for us forever.   We truly will witness “the victory of justice” as we commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion, death and resurrection.

O, the humility, the poverty, the reverence, the love of our God for all of humankind!

The Lord has done wondrous deeds (Ps. 98)

One of the verses of the responsorial psalm of today's liturgy request that we:

          "Sing a new song to the Lord.
          He has done wondrous deeds.
          His right hand has won victory for Him,
          His holy arm!"

A plan for the salvation of the world has been put in motion.
A plan for the salvation of every human being has been orchestrated.
Jesus has won victory over the powers of darkness in each person's life, in the life of each of my family members, in the life of my religious community, the church and every nation in the world.
No one will be lost except those who choose death over life, darkness over light, lies over the truth.

"O God, You trust us, your children, to the point of giving us freedom to choose the good and reject evil, to embrace the truth and shun lies.  In humility, Lord,. you do not control us but honor us, respect us, trust us to choose what is right and just, to walk in Your Son's footprints and, like the good thief, to accept salvation."