Our thoughts in this present life should turn on the praise of God, because it is in praising God that we shall rejoice for ever in the life to dome; and no one can be ready for the next life unless he trains himself for it now. So we praise God during our earthly life, […]
“Let us sing to the Lord a song of love” (St. Augustine)
Sing to the Lord a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will belong to the new covenant.
There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love. The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Radiant Faces (Holy Hour)
Tolstoy said, “Everything that I know…I know only because I love.”
Likewise, everything that I know about the Eucharist…I know only because I love.
One day at the seminary I was invited by a Capuchin Father to give a talk on the Eucharist to the sisters of perpetual adoration in St. Paul’s shrine Cleveland. Although I was asked to speak Korean because there were three Korean sisters, providing an English text for the sisters, giving a talk on the Eucharist to those whose charisma is the Eucharistic Adoration seemed very hard.
My Heart Will Go On (Palm Sunday)
“Jesus proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem.”
This is the beginning sentence of Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Jesus proceeded up to Jerusalem! What is Jerusalem? Why does Jesus need to move to the city where he could be killed? Apparently, Jesus knew what was going to happen to him. He made several predictions of the Passion, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and everything written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. He will be handed over to the Gentiles and he will be mocked and insulted and spat upon; and, after they have scourged him, they will kill him” (Luke 18:31-33). Nevertheless, he proceeded on his journey up to Jerusalem. Why?
On March 24 last Wednesday, we celebrated the 30th anniversary of Bishop Oscar Romero’s death who was killed by the military in El Salvador because he denounced the violence of the military regime and asked the soldiers not to follow the inhumane orders to kill others. He knew his life was threatened and yet he continued to preach the gospel of life. He said, “I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador. If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, then may my blood be the seed of liberty and a sign that hope will soon become a reality.”
The Prodigal Son/Daughter
There are two groups in the story that see themselves as opposite of one another: tax collectors and sinners & the Pharisees and scribes. The younger lost son parallels the sinners and tax collectors; the older lost son parallels the Pharisees and scribes. However, the merciful father welcomes two lost sons regardless of their failure to rejoice at home.
We are the prodigal son and daughter.
“Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.” This is an unacceptable statement because the Jewish custom was that the father doesn’t share his wealth before his death. The younger daughter literally means that she is waiting for her father’s death or she is so obsessed with the things outside home such as independence, wealth and freedom that she doesn’t know what she does to the father. Leaving the father’s house means denying that she belongs to the father and to God. However, the younger daughter soon finds herself in the severe famine, our usual circumstance of being away from God. And in the Jewish tradition, the Jews neither eat the swine nor touch it because they believe it is unclean. Now she has to take care of the swine to survive. Suddenly she comes to her senses and returns to the father.
We are the older son and daughter.
“Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your order, yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son—namely his brother—returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.” The complaint, spoken in anger, reveals the heart of the older son. Although he has stayed home, he has not stayed home as a son. He sees himself as a slave and wants to be paid for his labor. He lives with a smoldering resentment even though the father divided and shared all he had with both sons. Despite there has been no inequality or favoritism, this is the inner world the older son inhabits.
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