Sunday July 20, 2008: Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43

Two weeks ago we began our study of Romans 8. St. Paul gave us a wonderful teaching on what it means to live in the Spirit and to live in the flesh. He made it clear to us that the way of the flesh is completely opposite to the way of the Spirit. We have a choice between the Spirit and the flesh. The Spirit leads to eternal life and the flesh leads to death. For those of us who have chosen the life of the Spirit, St. Paul reminded us last week that we are not only adopted sons and daughters of God, but we are also the first fruits of his revelation. We await the total adoption of all of creation. We have an important responsibility in Christ’s work of redemption.

Even though we have received this special privilege of adoption and revelation from God, we still live in a world where there is sin and corruption. This is the constant battle of every Christians. St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6: 12ff, our fight is not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers of darkness. We struggle every day to live out our Christian vocation in the midst of this challenging world. There is sin and corruption in the world because the world has not fully experienced the redemption or revelation which we Christians are the first fruits. This contrary power in the world makes us weak and sometimes we don’t even know how to pray and even when we try to pray, we do not know the way to pray. We all have this kind of experience and sometimes we just give up praying. There are times we come to prayer it seems like nothing is happening – we aren’t sure if our prayers are even answered. St. Paul knows this feeling and says to us today that at these times, the spirit comes to help us pray as we should. When we are not sure of how to pray or what to pray for us because of our weakness, the Holy Spirit comes to our aid and helps us offer the prayers.

St. Paul challenges us today to pray in the Spirit. Praying in the spirit means recognizing our weaknesses and letting the Holy Spirit offer the intercessions for us. This requires a lot of faith and this is what sometimes we do in the Charismatic renewal and people think that we are crazy. When people say I am crazy, I just feel it is because I have more faith and I can trust that the spirit will do it for me. We need to develop the attitude of letting go of our agendas we bring to prayer and letting in the Holy Spirit to carry out the agenda of the Lord. We do not come to prayer with our wills dominating the prayer session – “God I want it to be done in my own way, at my own time.” Praying in the spirit means letting the spirit take control of our lives and filling our lips with what we can say. We do not know what we want to ask for. Sometimes we ask for wrong things in prayer – things we do not need or things that will not bring us greater good. God’s wish for every one of us is to live our full potential and achieve the greatest good possible. Any request less than that, you are not asking for the right thing.

Praying in the spirit means opening ourselves up to the Holy Spirit to use us. Sometimes we get too structured and give no room to the Holy Spirit to move us in powerful ways. We need not control what happens in prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit and not our own work. I am amazed how sometimes you ask a Catholic to lead in prayer and they become uncomfortable because they were not told ahead of time so that they would have the prayer written. If you tell our separated brothers and sisters, they will say, “bring it on.” We always spend so much time structuring and writing our prayers that by the time we say them, they sound like some scholarly theological text rather than prayer. When the Apostles went about ministering, they had to pray on several occasions, they did not excuse themselves because they were not told ahead of time. They let the Holy Spirit lead them to minister at the moment to the person that God has put before them. St. Paul tells us in Ephesians 6: 18 that we should pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. Whenever we are called upon to pray, let us not look for excuses why we cannot do it but as people of the Holy Spirit, let us embrace it as another wonderful opportunity to do the work of the spirit.

It is not uncommon to hear Catholics say to me, “I cannot pray.” They usually give this as a reason why they do not pray. If you believe that prayer is about what you are doing, then I can accept with you that you may not be able to pray. We know that prayer has nothing to do with what you are doing during that session, it is about what the Holy Spirit wants to accomplish. There have been many times I have sat through my prayer time doing nothing at all – not saying anything, not thinking about anything, not expecting anything – just sitting there alone and empty before God and I leave feeling so refreshed and enriched.

Prayer is impossible without the Holy Spirit. We need the Holy Spirit to be able to cry “Abba Father.” If you do not get the help of the Holy Spirit, your time of prayer is in vain. That is the reason we need to specifically invoke the Holy Spirit to come to our aid at the beginning of prayer. David sings in his psalm 51: 15, “O Lord open my lips , and my mouth will declare your praise.” The Church traditionally prays at the beginning of the rosary, “Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful.” St. Paul tells us in Romans 8:26 today that it is the Holy Spirit that leads us to pray properly as we should.

Let us today ask the Holy Spirit to come and teach us how to pray. May the spirit open our hearts and lead us into communion with the Holy Trinity.

Tuesday July 15, 2008: Isaiah 7:1-9; Matthew 11:20-24

Jesus Christ rebukes the people of Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum for their failure to believe in him. After performing mighty deeds in their midst, they were still lukewarm towards him and failed to believe in him. Sometimes, being lukewarm and indifferent could be worse than persecution. These people allowed Jesus within their midst, yet they were indifferent to the great sign they had among them. Sometimes we Catholics are like these people. How many Catholics are indifferent towards the Eucharist? They come to church on Sundays not because of the great gift of the Eucharist but just to avoid mortal sin. As you speak with Catholics who cannot freely practice their faith, they will tell you how much they crave for the Eucharist. As I have done some missions in rural Africa where they get to have Mass only may be once or twice a month, it is not uncommon to have people walk for about two miles just to have the Eucharist because it is a precious gift to them. Yet, we have the opportunity to have the Eucharist daily and we find it so difficult to do.

Jesus Christ tells us today that he is here in our midst and we must respond to him in faith. Our prayer today is for faith to always celebrate the Eucharist with joy knowing that Christ is among us doing mighty deeds.

Sunday July 13, 2008: Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23; Matthew 13:1-23 or 13:1-9

In today’s second reading, St. Paul continues his teaching concerning life in the Holy Spirit. Paul discusses the theme of our adoption in Jesus Christ. His understanding of adoption is different from the way we will understand adoption today in our society. An adopted child today has access to his biological family when he has reached certain age. In some instances, the child continues to have communication with his or her family. Adoption in the Greco-Roman world was a total separation from the previous family. All ties with the person’s family were completely severed once the person was adopted and no longer had access to his original family. The person in a sense took on a new life in which his debts of the previous life cannot be carried over to this new life. It wasn’t uncommon to have people take on a new name to signify their new personality. For St. Paul, this is what our adoption in Christ Jesus means.

By virtue of our baptism in Christ, we are adopted sons and daughters of God. As Jesus Christ tells us in the Gospel of John 1:12, “But to those who accept him he gave power to become children of God.” Our baptism empowers us to become the children of God and we can rightly cry “Abba, Father.” Our adoption eliminates our previous debts, debts that were paid by the precious blood of Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary. We can now embrace a new life free from corruption and sin. That is rightly the reason at baptism we take a new name to signify that we have become a new creation in Christ.

We are a privileged people to receive this special gift from God. We are privileged because we are the “first fruits of the Spirit.” What God is intending to accomplish in the whole of creation, he has chosen us as the first. The revelation which all of creation awaits with eager expectation, we have already experienced that revelation. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ and this we celebrate at every Eucharistic celebration. We have seen what the world have not seen – the Way, the Truth and the Life. We have been already set free from sin and corruption. All we wait for is the redemption of our bodies when we will truly unite with our heavenly Father in His/Our kingdom.

Given this rare privilege that we have, we must live truly as people who have hope. We must live in hope because what we have awaiting us is greater than whatever we experience in this world. The pains and sufferings of this world may overwhelm us and we begin to doubt God’s promises for us. We need to stand firm in faith knowing that the glory that is to be revealed to us is greater than the pains and sufferings of this world. These pains and sufferings are only temporal but the glory of God lasts forever. In his glory, there is righteousness, peace and Joy.

As first fruits of the Holy Spirit, we have an active role to play in God’s salvation of all creation. We need to be the face of Christ to all of creation by how we love. We must actively work to lead people away from the bondage of sin into the freedom of the children of God which we all have received. We have a lot of work cut out for us but it is easy if we live each day of our lives in the love of Christ and the love of neighbor. If we do this, then we are active agents in God’s revelation to all of his creation.