In tomorrow’s gospel passage for Mass, the scribes say of Jesus that, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “By the prince of demons he drives out demons” (Mark 3:22). Jesus indicates that, by saying this, they have committed the sin against the Holy Spirit. The classic understanding of the unforgivable sin is final impenitence, dying without repenting of a serious sin. Repentance requires truth to know one’s sins. The Holy Spirit enlightens our minds and hearts to know our sin. The Holy Spirit is integral in both knowing the truth and repenting of sin. One sins against the Holy Spirit when, at one’s death, one either refuses to acknowledge the truth of one’s sins or fails to turn away from those sins or both.
The scribes in this passage call the All-Good God the evil one; they ascribe as completely evil what is the epitome of good. By exercising such extremely bad judgment in such important matters, the scribes have become “blind guides.” They can no longer tell what is good and what is bad, even if it is purely good or purely bad. They are utterly blind in what matters most. Having thus depraved themselves to such an extent, calling what is good evil and what is evil good, as long as they continue on this path, they have no hope for salvation. To be forgiven, one needs to repent; to repent, one needs to see the truth of one’s sins; to see the truth about one’s sins, one needs the Holy Spirit; refusing to see the most obvious and easily recognizable good, evicts the Holy Spirit from one’s soul. The scribes are on the path to hell, and only by their humble crying out for light from the Holy Spirit to see their sins and then their humble admission of their faults, will they have hope for salvation.
Jesus goes on to make a very interesting explanation to the scribes’ accusation; he says that, “No one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder his house” (Mark 3:27). Satan is the prince of this world, and he has a certain domination over mankind enslaved to sin. He desires to lead as many people to hell as possible; he desires our destruction and the utter diminution of our lofty dignity. Satan’s work is spreading despair and death and stealing the spouse of God away from Him.
“The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8). The devil is the strong man whom Jesus comes and binds so that He can plunder his house. In the state of original sin into which everyone is born, Satan has an ownership of us; we are part of the belongings of his house. Jesus came to bind this strong tyrannical ruler and to set us free; the Old Testament image and prefigurement is God freeing the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt to pharaoh.
In Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection, He has bound the strong man and plundered his house. In baptism, we are set free from sin and Satan so that we can belong to Jesus; every Eucharist is a celebration of our baptism for we were baptized into Jesus’ death, and the Eucharist is Jesus’ crucified and risen flesh, particularly His heart flesh. “Likewise, my brethren, you have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead in order that we may bear fruit for God” (Romans 7:4). Jesus has bound the strong man, the tyrant who was our cruel slave master, and set us free to be united to Him. Jesus has plundered Satan’s house so that He can be our Spouse and unite us to Himself, making us fruitful for God.
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
Showing posts with label 1 John 3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1 John 3. Show all posts
1.07.2008
We Do What Pleases Him
There was a beautiful quote from today’s first reading from the first Letter of Saint John that I want to highlight tonight: “Beloved: We receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him” (1 John 3:22).
“Please.” Please is a magical word. My mom always told me it was the magic word. We want to please God; therefore, we keep His commandments, and that is why He answers our prayers. On the relational path of pleasing another, we start off wanting to please Our Heavenly Father, and we end up wanting to please our divine Spouse and Bridegroom, Jesus.
My wife is leaning over my shoulder as we eat salsa, hommus, and chips, and she said that God doesn’t always answer our prayers. That is true, for God does not answer every one of our prayers as we want. Let me come back to explain this after I explain something else first.
Yesterday I was talking about Saint Augustine’s book on virginity, and he was quoting and discussing what Saint Paul was saying about marriage and virginity. Paul said: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). The married seek to please their spouse; the virgins seek to please their divine Spouse. This does not mean that married people do not try to please the Lord, but it means that virgins have the ability to have more of an “undivided attention” for God.
The word “please” is a word often used in reference to a spouse. We seek to please the one to whom we are married, and it is right and good to do so. Virgins dedicated to God live the life of heaven here on earth and take God as their sole and primary Spouse. They sacrifice the very great good of an earthly spouse to gain the even greater good of the divine Spouse.
All of us are called to please the Lord and to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Insofar as we love Him and give ourselves to Him, we grow closer to Him and draw closer to becoming His spouse. After drawing close to Him, we do keep His commandments and we do seek to please Him; our wills more and more become as one. Our will and mind ever more closely conform to His will and mind. Our heart loves Him, and we seek to please Him. It is in this state of conformity of our mind and will to God that in our prayer we ask for what pleases God, and He always gives it because it is what He wanted to give all along.
Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with this conformity of His will to the divine will in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He did not want to undergo all the suffering that He knew was right around the corner, at least not in His humanity He didn’t. But above all else, Jesus was of one will with the Father, and so that conformity and obedience to the Father is what He wanted in His heart of hearts. He concludes His prayer to be spared the suffering with the prayer to be in union with the Father’s will. In the end, His prayer is only to do the Father’s will.
How do I pray with the very prayer of God? If we give ourselves trustingly into God’s hands, He will teach us and help us to pray: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27). Eventually, if we do not give up and rely increasingly more and more on Him, His heart will become our heart, and His will will become our will.
When you and I love God with a full heart and mind, when our tree of life is strong and bearing good fruit every month, then our prayer will be the very prayer of God Himself, and we will receive whatever we ask of our Father and of our Husband: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:16-17).
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
“Please.” Please is a magical word. My mom always told me it was the magic word. We want to please God; therefore, we keep His commandments, and that is why He answers our prayers. On the relational path of pleasing another, we start off wanting to please Our Heavenly Father, and we end up wanting to please our divine Spouse and Bridegroom, Jesus.
My wife is leaning over my shoulder as we eat salsa, hommus, and chips, and she said that God doesn’t always answer our prayers. That is true, for God does not answer every one of our prayers as we want. Let me come back to explain this after I explain something else first.
Yesterday I was talking about Saint Augustine’s book on virginity, and he was quoting and discussing what Saint Paul was saying about marriage and virginity. Paul said: “The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs, how to please her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:32-34). The married seek to please their spouse; the virgins seek to please their divine Spouse. This does not mean that married people do not try to please the Lord, but it means that virgins have the ability to have more of an “undivided attention” for God.
The word “please” is a word often used in reference to a spouse. We seek to please the one to whom we are married, and it is right and good to do so. Virgins dedicated to God live the life of heaven here on earth and take God as their sole and primary Spouse. They sacrifice the very great good of an earthly spouse to gain the even greater good of the divine Spouse.
All of us are called to please the Lord and to love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. Insofar as we love Him and give ourselves to Him, we grow closer to Him and draw closer to becoming His spouse. After drawing close to Him, we do keep His commandments and we do seek to please Him; our wills more and more become as one. Our will and mind ever more closely conform to His will and mind. Our heart loves Him, and we seek to please Him. It is in this state of conformity of our mind and will to God that in our prayer we ask for what pleases God, and He always gives it because it is what He wanted to give all along.
Jesus, in His humanity, struggled with this conformity of His will to the divine will in the Garden of Gethsemane as He prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). He did not want to undergo all the suffering that He knew was right around the corner, at least not in His humanity He didn’t. But above all else, Jesus was of one will with the Father, and so that conformity and obedience to the Father is what He wanted in His heart of hearts. He concludes His prayer to be spared the suffering with the prayer to be in union with the Father’s will. In the end, His prayer is only to do the Father’s will.
How do I pray with the very prayer of God? If we give ourselves trustingly into God’s hands, He will teach us and help us to pray: “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26-27). Eventually, if we do not give up and rely increasingly more and more on Him, His heart will become our heart, and His will will become our will.
When you and I love God with a full heart and mind, when our tree of life is strong and bearing good fruit every month, then our prayer will be the very prayer of God Himself, and we will receive whatever we ask of our Father and of our Husband: “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. 17 This I command you, to love one another” (John 15:16-17).
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
1.03.2008
Nupital Union
Lately, the daily readings at Mass cover some key points that I want to make, and tomorrow’s reading is no exception. The passage I will examine is the first reading which comes from 1 John 3:7-10:
“Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the Devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.”
To be saved, we have to be righteous, and to be righteous, we have to act in righteousness. Salvation is not some external imputation, for if it is merely an external imputation, then we would still be attached to serious sin, and whoever sins belongs to the Devil. The works of the Devil are to lead us into and keep us bound to sin. The work of God destroys these evil works and gives us the grace to act in righteousness, for there is no salvation apart from interior holiness. With God’s grace, we are truly God’s children with His seed within us which helps us to do and love the good, which helps us to actually love our brother. God transforms us into Himself and perfects and elevates our nature. He seeks the greatest intimacy with you and me, and the symbol of that intimacy is that of marriage.
I end tonight with some words of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, from his general audience of Wednesday, May 2, 2007, where he quotes the early Church Father, Origen, as well as John Paul the Great:
“The prayer of the Alexandrian [Origen] thus attained the loftiest levels of mysticism, as is attested to by his Homilies on the Song of Songs. A passage is presented in which Origen confessed: ‘I have often felt - God is my witness - that the Bridegroom came to me in the most exalted way. Then he suddenly left, and I was unable to find what I was seeking. Once again, I am taken by the desire for his coming and sometimes he returns, and when he has appeared to me, when I hold him with my hands, once again he flees from me, and when he has vanished I start again to seek him...’ ”(Hom. in Cant. 1, 7).
“I remember what my Venerable Predecessor wrote as an authentic witness in Novo Millennio Ineunte, where he showed the faithful ‘how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit's touch, resting filially within the Father's heart’.”
“ ‘It is’, John Paul II continues, ‘a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications.... But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by mystics as ‘nuptial union' ” ”(n. 33).
God proposes to you saying, “Will you marry me?”
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
“Children, let no one deceive you. The person who acts in righteousness is righteous, just as he is righteous. Whoever sins belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the beginning. Indeed, the Son of God was revealed to destroy the works of the Devil. No one who is begotten by God commits sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot sin because he is begotten by God. In this way, the children of God and the children of the Devil are made plain; no one who fails to act in righteousness belongs to God, nor anyone who does not love his brother.”
To be saved, we have to be righteous, and to be righteous, we have to act in righteousness. Salvation is not some external imputation, for if it is merely an external imputation, then we would still be attached to serious sin, and whoever sins belongs to the Devil. The works of the Devil are to lead us into and keep us bound to sin. The work of God destroys these evil works and gives us the grace to act in righteousness, for there is no salvation apart from interior holiness. With God’s grace, we are truly God’s children with His seed within us which helps us to do and love the good, which helps us to actually love our brother. God transforms us into Himself and perfects and elevates our nature. He seeks the greatest intimacy with you and me, and the symbol of that intimacy is that of marriage.
I end tonight with some words of our beloved Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, from his general audience of Wednesday, May 2, 2007, where he quotes the early Church Father, Origen, as well as John Paul the Great:
“The prayer of the Alexandrian [Origen] thus attained the loftiest levels of mysticism, as is attested to by his Homilies on the Song of Songs. A passage is presented in which Origen confessed: ‘I have often felt - God is my witness - that the Bridegroom came to me in the most exalted way. Then he suddenly left, and I was unable to find what I was seeking. Once again, I am taken by the desire for his coming and sometimes he returns, and when he has appeared to me, when I hold him with my hands, once again he flees from me, and when he has vanished I start again to seek him...’ ”(Hom. in Cant. 1, 7).
“I remember what my Venerable Predecessor wrote as an authentic witness in Novo Millennio Ineunte, where he showed the faithful ‘how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit's touch, resting filially within the Father's heart’.”
“ ‘It is’, John Paul II continues, ‘a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications.... But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by mystics as ‘nuptial union' ” ”(n. 33).
God proposes to you saying, “Will you marry me?”
Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.
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