Jesus Changes Our Perception Of Each Other’s Being

March 12, 2015

Thursday of the 3rd week of Lent

Jesus Changes Our Perception Of Each Other’s Being

“I will be your God and you shall be my people.”

Because of Jesus, who has made us children of the Father enlightened by the Holy Spirit, we are called and able to see each other with new eyes.

“Being” is the second “transcendental” all beings have in common. The most basic thing we know about each other is that we are what we are. But Jesus changes the way we see each other as beings.

First, Christians don’t just see each other as fellow human beings; we know we walk in the midst of beings who are divine. In every other Christian whom we see, the Father, Son and Spirit are present, living their divine life. Every other person we see is sharing in their divine life and living on the level of God. We live in an ongoing miracle. We walk in a milieu of mystery. We are in wonderland. Oz can’t even compare with it. If we see with the eyes of faith.

All human appearances are—literally—“mundane.” But if we put on our “faith glasses,” we see everything transformed. People are divine. God is present and acting with them, within them and through them. We are in a world of visible divinity.

This is what it means to be “contemplative.” It means to walk about with open eyes, or to see through the lens of faith. Contemplatives look. They look intently and deeply. They look to see what is there: all that is “visible and invisible.”

And their joy is full.

Do I choose to let Jesus show me others as they are?

Pray: “Lord, let me see your face. Show me yourself in others.”

Practice: Practice seeing everyone through faith-tinted glasses.

Discuss: How can we see God in all who have received the divine life of grace?

Jesus Makes Us Trinity

January 7, 2015

Wednesday after Epiphany Sunday
Click here for the complete text of today’s readings. 

Jesus Makes Us Trinity

In the Name of the Father,

and of the Son,

and of the Holy Spirit.

According to John, “No one has ever seen God.” But we have seen, and we “testify that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world.”

How do we experience his salvation?

“In him was life.” John identifies the Life Jesus gives with Light: 

“The life was the light of all people… To all who received [his light], who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God… And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 1:4,12; 17:3).

Jesus gives us life by giving us light to know God. The life he gives is God’s life. But God is love. So to know by the light Jesus gives is to live and love like God.

These three go together. Like the Three Persons of the Trinity, they are inseparable: divine Life from the Father as source of all being and goodness; divine Light from the Son as Word, expression of truth; divine Love from the Holy Spirit as experience of oneness.

Like the life of the triune God that we share, the “grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” is a triune gift: we live through the gift of knowing; we know through the gift of living; and both are verified in the gift of loving.

In practice, this means that if we “love one another as Jesus has loved us” (John 13:34), we know Jesus is giving us light and life.

The Good News is “to know and to believe in the love God has for us” by experiencing that love being given to others in us, through us and by us acting in union with Jesus.

What do we get out of believing in Jesus? If we put the phrases of the first reading (1John 4:11-18) in logical order, John gives us ten reasons to be Christians:

If we acknowledge that Jesus is the Son of God:

      God remains in us and we in God

      as God is, so are we in this world

      God gives us of his Spirit

      we know that we remain in him and he in us

      we know and we believe in the love God has for us

      we remain in love

      we love one another

      his love is brought to perfection in us

      we have no fear, because there is no fear in love

      we have confidence on the day of judgment.

The Christian life is all about being, knowing and loving. And giving expression to truth and love in action. Basically, it is living the Life of the Trinity as Father, Word and Spirit. On earth and in heaven. Now and forever.

Pray and Practice: 

When you make the “Sign of the Cross,” ask the Father for 

Life, the Son for Truth, and the Spirit for Love.

Discuss: How have you experienced, knowing, loving, and living on the level of God?

Death Fulfills the Promise

August 8: Friday of Week 18 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Nahum 2:1, 3; 3:1-3, 6-7; Canticle: Deuteronomy 32:35-36, 39, 41; Matthew 16:24-28

Thoughts to help us surrender to Jesus expressing himself through us in ministry.

“Never again shall the wicked invade you; he is utterly cut off.” Nahum 1:15 or 2:1

Promises, promises… In truth, Israel was invaded again repeatedly—and is inviting destruction today by relying totally on force and retaliation instead of on God.

And we ourselves are invaded constantly by bad desires and thoughts. Jesus says we won’t be delivered unless we accept to “lose our lives.”

We did that when we accepted to die with and in Christ at Baptism. Then all of our sins—past, present and future—were “taken away,” annihilated when we went down into the grave with him and rose as a “new creation” (Romans 6:3; 2Corinthians 5:17).

But the physical results of sin, including the attitudes and inclinations “programmed” into us by our infected culture, will not disappear until we say “Yes” to dying physically. That “Yes,” in which we surrender ourselves to death in total faith, hope and love, is our final purification.

Then in unqualified truth, “Never again shall the wicked invade us.” Everything evil will be “utterly cut off.” We will have “life to the full” in total union with God.

In the meantime we give and receive ministry in hope. We keep our eyes on the “end time,” when we will “know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,” and “be filled with all the fullness of God.”

That is the mantra that motivates our ministry.

PRAY: “Lord, deliver us from evil.”

PRACTICE: Die to yourself through love.