Saturday, June 18, 2016
Luke, Chapter 9, Verse 44-45
44 “Pay attention
to what I am telling you. The Son of Man is to be handed over to men.” 45 But they did
not understand this saying; its meaning was hidden from them so that they
should not understand it, and they were afraid
to ask him about this saying.
The apostles were so
caught up with the glory of Christ and their own dreams of power that they
dared not look at the truth. We often prefer to live in fantasy rather than
face the present and actually see what is really going on. We like the apostles
must “Pay Attention.” We must be mindful of others and support them where we
can, we must check in with others, exercise forgiveness and engage in service
to others and our (first to our families, charity begins at home-there should
be no orphans in your family) community.
Amoris Lætitia[1] Looking to Jesus: The Vocation
of the Family-Jesus restores and fulfills God’s
plan (61-65)
Contrary
to those who rejected marriage as evil, the New Testament teaches that “everything
created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected.” Marriage is “a gift”
from the Lord. At the same time, precisely because of this positive
understanding, the New Testament strongly emphasizes the need to safeguard God’s
gift: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be
undefiled.” This divine gift includes sexuality: “Do not refuse one another.”
God’s
original plan for man and woman, reaffirmed the indissoluble union between
them, even stating that ‘it was for your hardness of heart that Moses allowed
you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so’ (Mt 19:8). The
indissolubility of marriage – ‘what God has joined together, let no man put
asunder’ (Mt 19:6) – should not be viewed as a ‘yoke’ imposed on humanity, but
as a ‘gift’ granted to those who are joined in marriage… God’s indulgent love
always accompanies our human journey; through grace, it heals and transforms hardened
hearts, leading them back to the beginning through the way of the cross.
Through
his Church, Christ bestows on marriage and the family the grace necessary to
bear witness to the love of God and to live the life of communion. The Gospel
of the family spans the history of the world, from the creation of man and
woman in the image and likeness of God (cf. Gen 1:26-27), to the fulfillment of
the mystery of the covenant in Christ at the end of time with the marriage of
the Lamb (cf. Rev 19:9).”
He
began his public ministry with the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (cf. Jn
2:1-11). In this way he demonstrated the true meaning of mercy, which entails
the restoration of the covenant (cf. John Paul II, Dives in Misericordia, 4).
We
need to enter into the mystery of Jesus’ birth, into that “yes” given by Mary
to the message of the angel, when the Word was conceived in her womb. We need
to contemplate the joy of the shepherds before the manger. We need to
contemplate the religious expectation of Zechariah and his joy at the birth of
John the Baptist. We then need to peer into those thirty long years when Jesus
earned his keep by the work of his hands, reciting the traditional prayers and
expressions of his people’s faith and coming to know that ancestral faith until
he made it bear fruit in the mystery of the Kingdom. This is the mystery of
Christmas and the secret of Nazareth, exuding the beauty of family life!
Tomorrow Orthodox catholic's will be celebrating Pentecost.
Comments
Post a Comment