Thursday of the Fourth Week of
Easter
Acts,
Chapter 13, verse 16
So, Paul
got up, motioned with his hand, and said, “Fellow Israelites and you others who
are GOD-FEARING, listen.
The Apostle Paul Gestured. Most
effective speaker’s gesture. A gesture is defined by The American Heritage
College Dictionary as “a motion of the limbs or body made to express
thought or to emphasize speech.” Surely every gospel preacher should want to
emphasize his sermon. Let’s look to see what the Bible teaches about such. As
Paul was asked by the rulers of the synagogue, “. . . if you have any word of
exhortation for the people, say on. Then Paul stood up, and beckoning with
his hand said, Men of Israel, and ye that fear God, give audience” (Acts
13:15-16). The apostle Paul knew that gestures can help to enforce the oral
expression in gospel preaching. In Jerusalem, “. . . Paul stood on the stairs,
and beckoned with the hand unto the people. And when there was made a
great silence, he spake unto them in the Hebrew tongue, saying . . .” (Acts
21:40). Paul knew that gestures help communicate ideas and help get and hold
attention. It has been said that gesturing is not in keeping with humility.
Paul, who gestured, said, “Serving the Lord with all humility of mind,
and with many tears, and temptations, which befell me by the lying-in wait of
the Jews” (Acts 20:19). Paul was a humble-gesturing preacher! When the apostle
Paul made his defense before King Agrippa, he “. . . stretched forth the
hand, and answered for himself” (Acts 26:1). The stretching forth of one’s
hand is gesturing. [1]
Paul with his gesturing desires that we really listen.[2]
Listening is one of the
easiest things you’ll ever do, and one of the hardest.
In a sense, listening is
easy — or hearing is easy. It is “hearing with faith”
(Galatians 3:2, 5) that accents the achievements of Christ and thus is the
channel of grace that starts and sustains the Christian life.
True, sustained, active
listening is a great act of faith, and a great means of grace, both for us
and for others in the fellowship.
Lessons in Good Listening
1.
Good listening requires patience.
·
Avoid:
“a kind of listening with half an ear that presumes already to know what the
other person has to say.”
·
“Poor
listening diminishes another person, while good listening invites them to exist
and matter.” – TweetShare on Facebook
·
Good
listening requires concentration and means we’re in with both ears, and that we
hear the other person out till they’re done speaking.
2. Good listening is an act of love.
3.
Good listening asks perceptive questions.
Good listening asks
perceptive, open-ended questions that don’t tee up yes-no answers, but gently
peel the onion and probe beneath the surface. It watches carefully for
nonverbal communication but doesn’t interrogate and pry into details the
speaker doesn’t want to share, but meekly draws them out and helps point the
speaker to fresh perspectives through careful, but genuine, questions.
4. Good listening is ministry.
5.
Good listening prepares us to speak well.
“The best ministry you
might do today is to listen to someone’s pain all the way to the bottom.”TweetShare
on Facebook
6.
Good listening reflects our relationship with God.
Catechism
of the Catholic Church
PART ONE: THE PROFESSION OF FAITH
SECTION TWO I. THE CREEDS
CHAPTER TWO-I BELIEVE IN JESUS
CHRIST, THE ONLY SON OF GOD
Article
4 "JESUS CHRIST SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, WAS CRUCIFIED, DIED AND WAS
BURIED"
Paragraph 1.
JESUS AND ISRAEL
574 From
the beginning of Jesus' public ministry, certain Pharisees and partisans of
Herod together with priests and scribes agreed together to destroy him. Because
of certain acts of his expelling demons, forgiving sins, healing on the sabbath
day, his novel interpretation of the precepts of the Law regarding purity, and
his familiarity with tax collectors and public sinners--some ill-intentioned
persons suspected Jesus of demonic possession. He is accused of blasphemy
and false prophecy, religious crimes which the Law punished with death by
stoning.
575 Many
of Jesus' deeds and words constituted a "sign of contradiction", but
more so for the religious authorities in Jerusalem, whom the Gospel according
to John often calls simply "the Jews", than for the ordinary
People of God. To be sure, Christ's relations with the Pharisees were not
exclusively polemical. Some Pharisees warn him of the danger he was courting; Jesus
praises some of them, like the scribe of Mark 12:34, and dines several times at
their homes. Jesus endorses some of the teachings imparted by this
religious elite of God's people: the resurrection of the dead, certain
forms of piety (almsgiving, fasting and prayer), The custom of addressing
God as Father, and the centrality of the commandment to love God and neighbor.
576 In
the eyes of many in Israel, Jesus seems to be acting against essential
institutions of the Chosen People: - submission to the whole of the Law in its
written commandments and, for the Pharisees, in the interpretation of oral
tradition; - the centrality of the Temple at Jerusalem as the holy place where
God's presence dwells in a special way; - faith in the one God whose glory no
man can share.
I.
JESUS AND THE LAW
577 At
the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus issued a solemn warning in which
he presented God's law, given on Sinai during the first covenant, in light of
the grace of the New Covenant:
Do
not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets: I have come not
to abolish but to fulfil. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass
away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law, until
all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments,
and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of
heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the
kingdom of heaven.
578 Jesus,
Israel's Messiah and therefore the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, was to
fulfil the Law by keeping it in its all-embracing detail - according to his own
words, down to "the least of these commandments". He is in fact
the only one who could keep it perfectly. On their own admission the Jews
were never able to observe the Law in its entirety without violating the least
of its precepts. This is why every year on the Day of Atonement the
children of Israel ask God's forgiveness for their transgressions of the Law.
the Law indeed makes up one inseparable whole, and St. James recalls,
"Whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of
all of it."
579 This
principle of integral observance of the Law not only in letter but in spirit
was dear to the Pharisees. By giving Israel this principle they had led many
Jews of Jesus' time to an extreme religious zeal. This zeal, were it not
to lapse into "hypocritical" casuistry, could only prepare the
People for the unprecedented intervention of God through the perfect fulfilment
of the Law by the only Righteous One in place of all sinners.
580 The
perfect fulfilment of the Law could be the work of none but the divine
legislator, born subject to the Law in the person of the Son. In Jesus,
the Law no longer appears engraved on tables of stone but "upon the
heart" of the Servant who becomes "a covenant to the people",
because he will "faithfully bring forth justice". Jesus fulfils
the Law to the point of taking upon himself "the curse of the Law"
incurred by those who do not "abide by the things written in the book of
the Law, and do them", for his death took place to redeem them "from
the transgressions under the first covenant".
581 The
Jewish people and their spiritual leaders viewed Jesus as a rabbi. He
often argued within the framework of rabbinical interpretation of the Law. Yet
Jesus could not help but offend the teachers of the Law, for he was not content
to propose his interpretation alongside theirs but taught the people "as
one who had authority, and not as their scribes". In Jesus, the same
Word of God that had resounded on Mount Sinai to give the written Law to Moses,
made itself heard anew on the Mount of the Beatitudes. Jesus did not
abolish the Law but fulfilled it by giving its ultimate interpretation in a
divine way: "You have heard that it was said to the men of old. . . But I
say to you. . ." With this same divine authority, he disavowed
certain human traditions of the Pharisees that were "making void the word
of God".
582 Going
even further, Jesus perfects the dietary law, so important in Jewish daily
life, by revealing its pedagogical meaning through a divine interpretation:
"Whatever goes into a man from outside cannot defile him. . . (Thus, he
declared all foods clean.) . . . What comes out of a man is what defiles a man.
For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts. . ." In
presenting with divine authority, the definitive interpretation of the Law,
Jesus found himself confronted by certain teachers of the Law who did not
accept his interpretation of the Law, guaranteed though it was by the divine
signs that accompanied it. This was the case especially with the sabbath
laws, for he recalls, often with rabbinical arguments, that the sabbath rest is
not violated by serving God and neighbor, which his own healings did.
II.
JESUS AND THE TEMPLE
583 Like
the prophets before him Jesus expressed the deepest respect for the Temple in
Jerusalem. It was in the Temple that Joseph and Mary presented him forty days
after his birth. At the age of twelve he decided to remain in the Temple
to remind his parents that he must be about his Father's business. He went
there each year during his hidden life at least for Passover. His public
ministry itself was patterned by his pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great
Jewish feasts.
584 Jesus
went up to the Temple as the privileged place of encounter with God. For him,
the Temple was the dwelling of his Father, a house of prayer, and he was
angered that its outer court had become a place of commerce. He drove
merchants out of it because of jealous love for his Father: "You shall not
make my Father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was
written, 'Zeal for your house will consume me.'" After his
Resurrection his apostles retained their reverence for the Temple.
585 On
the threshold of his Passion Jesus announced the coming destruction of this
splendid building, of which there would not remain "one stone upon
another". By doing so, he announced a sign of the last days, which
were to begin with his own Passover. But this prophecy would be distorted
in its telling by false witnesses during his interrogation at the high priest's
house and would be thrown back at him as an insult when he was nailed to the
cross.
586 Far
from having been hostile to the Temple, where he gave the essential part of his
teaching, Jesus was willing to pay the Temple-tax, associating with him Peter,
whom he had just made the foundation of his future Church. He even
identified himself with the Temple by presenting himself as God's definitive
dwelling-place among men. Therefore his being put to bodily death presaged
the destruction of the Temple, which would manifest the dawning of a new age in
the history of salvation: "The hour is coming when neither on this mountain
nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father."
III.
JESUS AND ISRAEL'S FAITH IN THE ONE GOD AND SAVIOUR
587 If
the Law and the Jerusalem Temple could be occasions of opposition to Jesus by
Israel's religious authorities, his role in the redemption of sins, the divine
work par excellence, was the true stumbling-block for them.
588 Jesus
scandalized the Pharisees by eating with tax collectors and sinners as
familiarly as with themselves. Against those among them "who trusted
in themselves that they were righteous and despised others", Jesus
affirmed: "I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to
repentance." He went further by proclaiming before the Pharisees
that, since sin is universal, those who pretend not to need salvation are blind
to themselves.
589 Jesus
gave scandal above all when he identified his merciful conduct toward sinners
with God's own attitude toward them. He went so far as to hint that by
sharing the table of sinners he was admitting them to the messianic banquet. But
it was most especially by forgiving sins that Jesus placed the religious
authorities of Israel on the horns of a dilemma. Were they not entitled to
demand in consternation, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" By
forgiving sins Jesus either is blaspheming as a man who made himself God's equal
or is speaking the truth and his person really does make present and reveal
God's name.
590 Only
the divine identity of Jesus' person can justify so absolute a claim as
"He who is not with me is against me"; and his saying that there was
in him "something greater than Jonah,. . . greater than Solomon",
something "greater than the Temple"; his reminder that David had
called the Messiah his Lord, and his affirmations, "Before Abraham
was, I AM", and even "I and the Father are one."
591 Jesus
asked the religious authorities of Jerusalem to believe in him because of the
Father's works which he accomplished. But such an act of faith must go
through a mysterious death to self, for a new "birth from above"
under the influence of divine grace. Such a demand for conversion in the
face of so surprising a fulfilment of the promises allows one to
understand the Sanhedrin's tragic misunderstanding of Jesus: they judged that
he deserved the death sentence as a blasphemer. The members of the
Sanhedrin were thus acting at the same time out of "ignorance" and
the "hardness" of their "unbelief".
IN
BRIEF
592 Jesus
did not abolish the Law of Sinai, but rather fulfilled it (cf Mt 5:17-19) with
such perfection (cf Jn 8:46) that he revealed its ultimate meaning (cf Mt 5:33)
and redeemed the transgressions against it (cf Heb 9:15).
593 Jesus
venerated the Temple by going up to it for the Jewish feasts of pilgrimage, and
with a jealous love he loved this dwelling of God among men. the Temple
prefigures his own mystery. When he announces its destruction, it is as a
manifestation of his own execution and of the entry into a new age in the
history of salvation, when his Body would be the definitive Temple.
594 Jesus
performed acts, such as pardoning sins, that manifested him to be the Saviour
God himself (cf Jn 5:16-18). Certain Jews, who did not recognize God made man
(cf Jn 1:14), saw in him only a man who made himself God (Jn 10:33), and judged
him as a blasphemer.
Daily
Devotions
·
Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them
in fasting: Today's Fast: Holy Priests, Consecrated, & Religious
·
Litany of the Most Precious
Blood of Jesus
·
Manhood of
the Master-week 12 day 5
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
· Make reparations to the Holy Face
· Total Consecration
to Mary Day 15
[1]http://www.truthmagazine.com/then-paul-stood-up-and-beckoning-with-his-hand
[2] https://healthyleaders.com/six-lessons-in-good-listening
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