OUR DAILY BREAD SUNDAY, MARCH 16, 2014, SECOND WEEK OF LENT Gen. 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18; Ps. 116; Rom. 8:31b-34; Mk. 9:2-10 THIS IS MY BELOVED SON, LISTEN TO HIM Many people in this world are enveloped in a very thick darkness. Many people get confused about what really to believe. It gets worse in the face of crises. Our faith in God begins to fade. God becomes remote. Even when things are normal, some deeper questions about life, death, and the afterlife remain foggy in our minds. Today, God rings a big bell and makes a loud announcement: “This is my beloved Son, listen to him” Christ was preparing the inner circle of his disciples, Peter, James and John, for the terrible scandalous moment of his death. He gave them a glimpse of the resurrection. They did not understand it, but that was what they experienced. And Christ told them never to talk about it until after the resurrection. They still did not understand what resurrection meant, but Christ knew they would understand later. The closest we can come to understanding the resurrection is through the transfiguration. It is like a preview of the resurrection. The reason the disciples were confused was because they did not yet understand the resurrection. They focused on the earthly glory of Jesus and were not prepared for the suffering he predicted. This is our own confusion today. We do not understand the resurrection and therefore are not prepared for the suffering God gives us in Christ. We are buried in our struggle and search for the glory of this passing life and we remain terribly ignorant of the real lasting glory that is ours in Christ. God says through the prophet Hosea, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). The worst disease on earth is ignorance. And there are many learned ignorant people all over the world. Only one learning is true learning: Listening to and following the Son of God DAILY. When God said, ‘This is my Son, listen to him’, He really means, ‘I have sent my Son to you, ‘my children’, that he may bring you home; listen to Him and follow him daily. The fruit of the knowledge of good and evil eaten by our first parents has always being the root cause of evil in our world. Many people believe they know what is good and evil by themselves. The meaning of the sin of Adam and Eve was trying to decide good and evil in the absence of God. The result of that attempt was the discovery that without God we are naked. We depend on God for everything. All the things we gather around ourselves to cover up our dependence on God are mere leaves. At the slightest strike of any crises they dry up and expose our nakedness once more. God intervenes to save the situation by clothing us with ‘garments of skins’, which involved some shedding of animal blood. This is a shadowy picture of what God does through Christ’s Death and Resurrection to restore our glorious status as His Children. Together with Christ, we must go through the gate of suffering and death before we enter into the glory of eternal life with him. But we must listen to Christ and follow him daily. We need Christ the way, the truth and the life every day more than we need ordinary food. Because of this, Christ builds his family, the Church as a place for feeding God’s children with this Daily Food. But the same serpent often succeeds in leading many of us to the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. We are not ready to listen to any one. We believe we can decide good and evil on our own, and even among many Christians, the evil of independence still prevails, many believe they can read the Bible on their own. But God directs us to his Son, and his Son speaks to us through the Church. The Father sent Christ and Christ sends His Church (Jn. 20:21; Lk 10:16;). The Church is the pillar and strong foundation of truth (1 Tim. 3:14-15). The Bible is not an independent book. It is the handbook of the Church. And like in a normal family, it is the work of the mother to take from the store of the food in the house to feed the children with a balanced diet. This is God’s arrangement. We must listen to Christ speaking to us Daily through the Church in the Daily Readings of the Mass. This is the Voice of God‘s Son leading us home to the Father. Only with the proper Daily feeding on the Word of God can we go through the darkness and desert of this world and through all the troubles we meet on the way, and come out stronger and more focused on our real lasting glory far better and beyond the pains and the beauty of anything we see now. Please, listen to Christ DAILY in his Word. Father, humble my sinful pride and through your Spirit guide me to listen to your Son daily and follow his steps home to you.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 04:07:04 +0000
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