Thursday, March 10, 2016
Isaiah,
Chapter 66, Verse 4-5
4 I in turn will choose affliction for them and bring
upon them what they fear. Because when I called, no one answered, when I
spoke, no one listened. Because they did what was evil in my sight, and things
I do not delight in they chose, 5 hear
the word of the LORD, you who tremble at his word! Your kin who hate you and
cast you out because of my name say, “May the LORD show his glory, that we may
see your joy”; but they shall be put to shame.
We are in a battle with the
forces of darkness. Our priest the Pope of our church is saying to us “Do not
be afraid”. He is reminding us that
the love of God is like a pebble that is dropped on the smooth surface of a
pond. When God’s love truly pierces our hearts, as the pebble on the pond, our
own love will ripple outward perfectly in symmetry with the universe, embracing
everything in its path with His reflected glory.
When God’s love truly pierces our
hearts we reflect with sorrow on our sins and transgressions. We as Lord
Tennyson acclaimed must develop the mantra “To
Strive, To Seek, To Find and not to Yield.” We seek to develop within
ourselves genuine compunction of heart.
Compunction is a deep and lasting sorrow for our
sins. It is not a gloomy or depressing sorrow, but an intelligent admission of
your sins and a sincere determination to do something about them. It is a
realization of how you have failed such a loving God and brings with it a
readiness to accept anything that He wills. Compunction opens the way to many
blessings and precious graces. Compunction will cause the world to lose its
magic attraction. Compunction will help you realize how quickly earthly joys
pass away, while eternity goes on forever. By compunction a man begins to
attack his faults and to practice the opposite virtues.[1]
Let us develop within ourselves
the virtues of Mary Most Holy: Humility, Generosity, Chastity, Patience,
Self-Control, and Love.
Relics[2]
“And as a man was being
buried, lo, a marauding band was seen and the man was cast into the grave of
Elisha; and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and
stood on his feet (2 Kgs. 13:21).
So
completely do the saints correspond to God’s grace that for a millennium and
more after their bodies have lain lifeless—their very bones remain a channel of
grace. By the mere touch of the Prophet Elisha’s lifeless bones, life returned
to a dead man’s body; so great is the grace of God as it works through the
bodies of the Saints. That principle was true in the Old Covenant as well as
the New. In the Gospels we find a woman who “suffered from a hemorrhage for
twelve years.” She had given up on doctors but she knew she could trust in the
touch of something holy. As Jesus passed by she thought, “If I only touch his
garment, I shall be made well” (Mt. 9:20-21) and she was. Before Jesus ascended
to heaven, he breathed upon the Church (Jn. 20:22) and imparted his life-giving
Spirit. As God breathed life into the clay to make Adam; Christ breathed life
into the apostles making them children of God. The early Christians built many
churches over the graves of the martyrs. This was a decisive break with the
traditions from the Romans and Jews who considered human corpses to be unclean—death
dealing rather than life-giving. Christian on the other hand believed in the
marvelous exchange: Christ became what we are so that we might become what he
it. Even today when the church constructs its altars it is customary for all
parishes to deposit small relics of the saints within a sealed cavity inside
the churches altar.
Incorruptibility[3]
Incorruptibility
is a Roman Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox belief that divine intervention allows some human bodies
(specifically saints
and beati)
to avoid the normal process of decomposition
after death as a sign of their holiness. Bodies that undergo little or no
decomposition, or delayed decomposition, are sometimes referred to as incorrupt
or incorruptible. Incorruptibility is thought to occur even in the presence of
factors which normally hasten decomposition, as in the cases of saints Catherine
of Genoa, Julie Billiart, Francis Xavier and Pier Giorgio Frassati.
God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. (Jn. 3:16)
[1]
Paone, Anthony J., S.J. My Daily Bread, Confraternity of the Precious Blood.
[2]
Hahn, Scott, Signs of Life; 40 Catholic Customs and their biblical roots. Chap.
26. Relics.
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