"This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." (Matthew 17:5)
Thank you Father for pointing Jesus to us. Open our hearts to listen to the words of your Son. Move our wills to obey him.
We listen to Jesus in the scriptures. St. Jerome says that ignorance of the scriptures is ignorance of Christ. We listen to Jesus especially as the scripture is proclaimed in the Eucharist. We also listen to Jesus in the prayers of the Church.
"Beloved: Bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God." (2 Timothy 8)
The Sorrowful Mysteries of the Holy Rosary contemplates the passion of Jesus Christ from Gethsemane to Calvary. We pray for the grace to share in these sufferings in our daily life, starting in small things. We remember that he who is faithful in little things will be faithful in bigger things. If we cannot accept pinpricks for the sake of Christ, definitely, we cannot accept martyrdom.
"Our soul waits for the Lord,
who is our help and shield.
For in God our hearts rejoice;
in your holy name we trust.
May your kindness, Lord, be upon us;
we have put our hope in you.
(Psalm 33: 20-22)
I place my hope for the success of the Enterprise on God alone.
I started the Enterprise with the Lord; I am continuing it today with the Lord. And with God's grace, I shall conclude it with the Lord.
"Go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your father's house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you … " (Genesis 12: 1 – 4)
The Enterprise is a going forth from the land of my kinsfolk. It is leaving behind my father's house for the land that God has shown me. The Enterprise is journey with Christ and to Christ. God promises me abundant blessings.
Father, I hear your word again today and I believe it. Let it be done to me according to your word and not according to the smallness of my faith.
I hold firmly to this word. I never waver from this vision. My faith in this has been compounding since 0296. Thank you Father. As my faith compounds, my patience is strengthened. Faith that is firm is also patient.
"Father of light, in you is found no shadow of change but only the fullness of life and limitless truth. Open our hearts to the voice of your word and free us from the original darkness that shadows our vision. Restore our sight that we may look upon your Son who calls us to repentance and a change of heart …. " (Opening Prayer in Mass)
God is the Father of light. Satan is the father of lies. God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. Satan changes all the time like a chameleon to suit his agenda. In God is found fullness of life and limitless truth. In Satan is found death and empty lies.
Because we know that everything is a gift, we pray to God to open our hearts to the voice of his Son; without this grace, we cannot hear Jesus speak to us in his word. If we do not perceive clearly the light in God's word, it is because we still have darkness in us that clouds our ability to see. We ask God to free us from this darkness and restore our sight that we may see Christ in his word calling us to repentance and change of heart.
"God our Father, help us to hear your Son. Enlighten us with your word, that we may find the way to your glory … " (Mass Prayer in Lent)
God is our Father. I am never tired of repeating this because it is such a comforting truth. Jesus Christ in his ministry of the word paints the picture of a Father that is altogether loving and immensely compassionate. I need to remember that I have such a Father as I face struggles in my life. Jesus says that our Father already knows what we need and will provide fully for every need.
The Father wants us to know and accept his Son, Jesus. He gives us the grace to hear and understand his word. To understand and accept the words of Jesus Christ is to find the way to glory.
"Remember your mercies, Lord, your tenderness from ages past. Do not let our enemies triumph over us; O God, deliver Israel from all her distress." (Psalm 25: 6, 3, 22)
God's mercies and tenderness from ages past extend from age to age to those who fear him. The Bible is a record of God's faithful mercies and tenderness towards man from age to age.
We pray to God daily not to allow our enemies triumph over us because our enemies are constantly alert and prowling around seeking for whom to devour. Today is the day of favor. It is also the day of battle with the enemy. The Bible is also a record of man's struggle with the enemy of mankind. Our success or failure in life depends on our trust in God and his word.
Finally, we pray to God to deliver Israel from all her distress. The Church is the new Israel. The distress of Israel/Church is the distress caused by her own sins and the sins of the world.
"Lord, may the word we share be our guide in the kingdom. May the food we receive assure us of your constant love …. " (Mass Prayer in Lent)
In the Eucharist, God's word is broken open for our encouragement, light and guide. After the Mass, we go to our homes and our jobs to face issues concerning the family, job, money, health, tools and food. The word of God we hear at Mass should provide us light to deal with the various issues we face in the day.
In the Eucharist, we receive Jesus Christ as our food. This communion is a pledge of God's constant love for us. We find consolation in the truth that Jesus Christ is for us and with us because he gave himself freely to us in the Eucharist. This is the greatest gift.
"But I say this to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you; so that you may be children of your Father in heaven for he causes his sun to rise on the bad as well as the good, and sends down rain to fall on the upright and the wicked alike." (Matthew 5: 44-45)
Every word of God is a prophecy and a promise containing a prediction and a condition for fulfillment. In the above prophecy, Jesus is predicting that those who love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them will be free. They will also be children of God and enjoy everything that comes with that status. Now is this promise true? Ask anybody who has tried forgiving his enemies and praying for his persecutors. I raise my hand in testimony. This action of forgiving and praying for our enemies has the most cleansing and liberating effect possible in life. Why is this so? This is because every word of God contains a powerful agent to bring about that which is promised.
"Happy those whose way is blameless, who walk by the teaching of the Lord.
Happy those who observe God's decrees, who seek the Lord with all their heart.
They do not wrong; they walk in God's ways.
You have given them the command to keep your precepts with care. (Psalm 119: 1-4)
In reading through the Bible, I observe that a lot of blessings is attached to keeping God's commandments. Some of the Bible heroes may not be canonized by the Church because of the life they lived. Without exception, each of them lived with the fear of the Lord. They did their best to keep God's laws and when they failed, they were quick to repent. Every one of them was immensely blessed by God. King David is my star among the Bible heroes. He was a great sinner but he loved God intensely. He lived completely in a supernatural environment in which God is the first cause of everything. David sought the Lord with all his heart.
"Eternal Father, turn our hearts to you. By seeking your kingdom and loving one another, may we become a people who worship you in spirit and truth …" Mass Prayer in Lent
God is our eternal Father. Lent is a time of divine favor. One of our desires in the period of Lent is to turn to God with all our hearts, to seek his kingdom and to love one another. The disciplines of Lent: Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving when undertaken with generosity enable us to attain this objective. We thus become who we are created to be – sons and daughters who worship our eternal Father in spirit and truth.
"Yahweh your God commands you today to observe these laws and customs; you must keep and observe them with all your heart and with all your soul." (Deuteronomy 26:16)
Father, if I observe all your commands and customs, you promise me:
"That he will be your God, but only if you follow his ways, keep his statutes, his commandments, his customs, and listen to his voice … he will raise you higher than every other nation he has made, and you will be a people consecrated to Yahweh, as he has promised." (Deuteronomy 26: 17-19)
Thank you Father for this promise. The Holy Spirit in me will help me to observe all God's laws and customs.
"The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; his commandments are the wisdom of the simple." (Psalm 19:8)
The 10 commandments as a system of law is perfect. The word of God revives the soul. When the soul is depressed, burdened, give it the tonic of the WOG.
How are the simple and uneducated to attain wisdom? Through the word of God. God's word is the school of wisdom for everyone but especially for the simple.
"For I tell you, if your uprightness does not surpass that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never get into the kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 5: 20)
In Ignatian spirituality, the spirit of the magis is the intense desire to do more and not less for Christ. If we live this spirit, in everything we do, we do more than is strictly required and never less. Magis means going to the extra mile for the love of Christ Jesus. This is the spirit that impelled St. Francis Xavier, one of the first Jesuits to desire to conquer all the Far East for Jesus Christ in the 16th Century.
Christ says in Matthew 5: 20 that the mediocre spirituality of the scribes and Pharisees will not be enough in the new dispensation. O Holy Spirit, teach me the principle of the magis.
"I trust in the Lord; my soul trusts in his word. My soul waits for the Lord more than sentinels wait for the dawn." (Psalm 130: 5-6)
Isaiah says that faith that is firm is also patient.
To find out what it means to be patient, I checked the dictionary and found the following:
1 : bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint
2 : manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain
3 : not hasty or impetuous
4 : steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity
Faith that is firm can endure trials and pain while waiting for an answer. It is not hasty or impetuous in seeking a resolution. It is steadfast in the goal that is expected despite opposition, difficulty or adversity. Won't it be nice to have such a faith?
"But if the upright abandons uprightness and does wrong by copying all the loathsome practices of the wicked, is he to live? All his upright actions will be forgotten from then on; for the infidelity of which he is guilty and the sin which he has committed, he will most certainly die." (Ezekiel 18: 24)
Persevere in doing good to the very last.
Your endurance to the last will save your life.
When I broke with God in the years of my rebellion and wilderness, all my upright actions were forgotten. I died to the life of grace. We are truly alive because of the supernatural life of God in us. This life is supplied by the indwelling Holy Spirit. When we live in sin and refuse reconciliation with God, this life dies.
"Lord, may our observance of Lent help to renew us and prepare us to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ ….. " (Opening Prayer in a Lenten Mass)
I wrote the following comment in my journal on the above in 1999:
How we observe Lent:
We are renewed through the observance of the above exercises and others. This observance becomes a mysterious vehicle of grace.
"Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you ….. " (Matthew 7: 7 – 12)
This is big promise from Jesus. Do I believe this? Yes, I do. Do I believe that this applies to me all the time? I do not know. We read in the Book of Joshua these beautiful words about God's faithfulness to his promises:
"And so the Lord gave Israel all the land he had sworn to their fathers he would give them. Once they have conquered and occupied it, the Lord gave them peace on every side, just as he had promised their fathers. Not one of their enemies could withstand them; the Lord brought all their enemies under their power. Not a single promise that the Lord made to the house of Israel was broken; every one was fulfilled." (Joshua 21: 43 – 45)
We see in Scripture again and again that God is a Promise Keeper. My relationship with the Holy Spirit has grown from my experience that I can ask for help and receive it in a timely fashion.
"O Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. I will give thanks to you, O Lord, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth." (Psalm 138: 3, 1,4)
I learned from the experience of Israel that no matter how deeply they had offended God and no matter how long they stayed in rebellion, once they cry out to Yahweh, he answers them and saves them. This reminds me of the Divine Mercy. The mercy and compassion of God is unfathomable.
The ABC of Mercy states:
"Then calling to mind all the wonderful works of the Lord, he (Mordecai) offered this prayer …" (Esther 4: 17a)
I have found again and again from personal experience that calling to mind the wonderful works of God in my life produces immediate impact on faith, hope and love. In time of dire need and crisis, this therapy never fails. I also know that it works for others. I have used it successfully to alleviate mild depression in others.
Why is remembering God's wonderful works in our life so powerful in lifting us up from despondency? We know that what happened before can happen again. The fire of hope is lighted. And we feel gratitude and love for the one who relieved us in the past at the moment of dire need. We are emboldened to ask for help in the present crisis. God's standing promise can be claimed: "Call upon me at the time of need and I will answer you."
Satan being the father of lies and deception will give anything to cause us to forget God marvelous deeds in our life. I try to build up purposely a list of these wonderful works in my life. I printed the list and put it in a wall in my workstation and bedroom. As long as I am in my home, the devil has little chance of winning in this game. Whenever I am attacked by doubts, I don't have to think hard to remember. I glance at the wall and see the list. And then I give thanks and the discouragement vanishes. Thank you Jesus.
