Independence Day: Its Spiritual Dimension

INDEPENDENCE DAY

IN You, O Lord, is our independence from the evils of the world in which we live, where Satan prowls seeking the ruin of souls.

No other way are we safe from Satan’s deceitfulness but in the Lord Jesus.

Deliver us, O Lord Jesus, from compulsively pursuing ideologies that replace our freedom and the freedom of all peoples.

Examine our minds and our hearts, Lord, and cleanse them of that which enslaves us to non-loving, non-caring, non-compassionate thoughts and behaviors.

Please, Lord, show us the way that leads to true freedom.

Expurgate/cleanse our hearts of hatred and prejudices; give us clean hearts, O Lord.

Never let us depart from You, O God, in pursuit of worldly pleasures as a God-substitute.

Deliver the world, Lord, from the evils of human trafficking, slave labor, drug trafficking, abortion and all kinds of criminal behaviors.

Enlighten our minds, O Lord, to know Your ways of love and mercy and compassion toward all and, first of all, towards ourselves.

Never allow us, O Lord, to boast of our accomplishments, as any good we do is done by You at work within our being.

Cancelling the debt we owed You, O God, because of our disobedience to You, we are now free to serve You in love and service to our neighbor, addressing wrongdoing and making right injustices that enslave the world in which we live.

Expand our hearts to embrace the poor and needy of this world: immigrants  and anyone fleeing persecution, abuse (physical, emotional sexual), and death (including death of the spirit by verbal and emotional abuse).

Day in and day out, Lord, the poor and needy cry out to You for deliverance; may we be your hands and feet and heart that offers them deliverance from extreme poverty that deprives them of their basic human rights.

Always precious in Your sight, O Lord, are your sons and and daughters; You wait for each of us to turn to You as our Savior and God.

Yearning for You like a deer yearns for running water, we, your sons and daughters await the day of salvation gained for us by Your death and resurrection: our true independence!

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!

Reverence for the Word of God

Today we celebrate the feast of St. John, the apostle.  He opens his Gospel with the following truths of our faith: In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God…Through him all things came into being….The Word became flesh, he lived among us, and we saw his glory, the glory that he has from the Father as only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth” (Jn 1:1, 14). When the Word of God spoke at the time appointed by the Father, you and I were created in God’s image.  Each of us is a word spoken by God. Through the prophet Isaiah, Yahweh reminds  us that no word returns to God  “void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it” (Is 55:11). You and I will not return to God until God has accomplished in us and through us what God desires of us: a woman or a man who reflects the image of God in a world deprived of light, truth and integrity.

When others encounter us, do they see, hear, touch the heart of their Creator or have we substituted a false god in the choices we make and the words we speak?  The choice is ours to make. Yahweh says to us in Dt. 30: 19: Choose life, not death. In other words, we have the choice today to be a “word” of life, not death, in each of the choices we make.  We are free to accomplish God’s will or to sidestep that process by doing what Adam and Eve did in the Garden, choosing to do their will and not God’s. The consequences will be the same for us as for Adam and Eve—we deprive ourselves of “the paradise” that God intended for us and the freedom to be one with God in the choices we make today.