Trong mùa Chay này, chúng ta được nhắc nhở về trách nhiệm Kitô giáo của chúng ta. Chúng ta phải
nhận thức được
mối liên hệ và
giao ước giữa
Thiên Chúa và chúng ta.
Bài đọc thứ nhất trong sách Đệ Nhị Luật nêu rõ những
lời hứa của Thiên Chúa với con người trong bản một giao ước ngắn gọn,
nhưng với niềm hy vọng là chúng ta sống theo mệnh
lệnh của Thiên
Chúa. Những yếu tố liên tục gắn kết chúng ta với
Thiên Chúa là nhận thức qua kinh nghiệm những
sự tốt lành của
Thiên Chúa cũng như tình yêu vô điều kiện mà Ngài dành cho chúng ta một
cách cụ thể (TV 118), Đây là một
trong những ơn gọi của mỗi người Kitô hữu. Nếu chúng ta sống với khía cạnh này, chúng ta sẽ tìm thấy những sự ngạc nhiên của những
biến đổi đã
diễn ra trong cuộc sống của chúng ta
và qua những sự ngạc nhiên trong cuộc sống đó, chúng ta sẽ thấy mình trở nên giống Chúa Kitô hơn
trong những suy nghĩ và trong những hành động của chúng ta.
Do đó mầu nhiệm Nhập Thể chắc chắn
phải có nghĩa gì trong cuộc sống
của chúng ta. Đấy là những gì mà Thiên Chúa đã mời gọi và
đòi hỏi nơi chúng ta "anh em hãy nên hoàn thiện, như Cha anh
em trên trời là Ðấng hoàn thiện." .
Lạy Chúa, xin
ban cho chúng con
có những ân sũng của Chúa Thánh Thần trong Mùa Chay thánh này để chúng con được
trở nên giống như Chúa Kitô trong những suy nghĩ và hành động của chúng con, nhờ đó chúng
con sẽ mạnh dạn làm chứng cho
tình yêu vô biên, vô điều kiện của Chúa đã ban cho chúng con,
là những người thật là tội lỗi.
Saturday 1st ưeek
ò Lent
During the season of
Lent, we are reminded of our Christian responsibility. Firstly, in our
relationship with God. Are we aware of the covenantal relationship between God
and us? The first reading in Deuteronomy states clearly the declaration of this
covenant; a compact treaty that expects us to follow God’s commands. The constant factor that binds us with God in
this covenantal relationship is the awareness and concrete experience of God’s
goodness and unconditional love for us. (Ps. 118). This moves us to witness to
this love by our love for others. This is the other dimension of our Christian
vocation. If we live these two dimensions, we will gradually find, to our
amazement that transformation takes place in our lives. Then to our surprise,
we begin to see ourselves becoming more Christ-like in our thoughts and
actions.
Thus making sure what
Incarnation means in our lives. This is what the call ‘to be perfect as our
heavenly Father is perfect’ entails. “Lord,
grant us the Lenten grace to be more like You in our thoughts and action, thus
witnessing to your unconditional love for us, sinners.”
Saturday
of the First Week of Lent
“But I say to you, love your
enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your
heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes
rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” Matthew 5:44–45
Today’s Gospel ends with Jesus
saying, “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” This is a
high calling! And it is clear that part of the perfection to which you are
called requires a generous and total love even for those you may consider your
“enemies” and those who “persecute” you.
When faced with this high
calling, one immediate reaction could be that of discouragement. When faced
with such a challenging command, it is understandable that you may feel
incapable of such a love, especially when the hurt caused by another is
ongoing. But there is another reaction that is entirely possible and one for
which we should aim. And that reaction is deep gratitude.
The gratitude we should allow
ourselves to experience is on account of the fact that our Lord wants us to
share in His life of perfection. And the fact that He commands us to live this
life also tells us that it is entirely possible. What a gift! What an honor it
is to be invited by our Lord to love with His very heart and to love to the
extent that He loves all people. The fact that we are all called to this level
of love should result in our hearts giving deep thanks to our Lord.
If discouragement, however, is
your immediate reaction to this calling from Jesus, try to look at others from
a new perspective. Try to suspend judgment toward them, especially against
those who have and continue to hurt you the most. It’s not your place to judge;
it’s your place only to love and to see others as the children of God who they
are. If you dwell upon another’s hurtful actions, angry feelings will
inevitably arise. But if you strive only to see them as children of God whom
you are called to love without reserve, then even feelings of love will more
easily arise within you, helping you to fulfill this glorious command.
Reflect, today, upon this high
calling of love and work to foster gratitude within your heart. The Lord wants
to give you an incredible gift by loving all people with His heart, including
those who tempt you to anger. Love them, see them as God’s children and allow
God to draw you into the heights of perfection to which you are called.
My most perfect Lord, I thank
You for loving me despite my many sins. I thank You for also calling me to
share in the depths of Your love for others. Give me the eyes to see all people
as You see them and to love them as You love them. I do love You, Lord. Help me
to love You and others more. Jesus, I trust in You.
Saturday 1st week
of Lent 2023
Opening Prayer: My Lord, let your Spirit widen my heart through
your words and with your wisdom. Help me to become more like you and teach me
to love my neighbor as you love me.
Encountering Christ:
1. Love My Enemies?: Jesus’s invitation to love
one’s enemies is so well known that it has become proverbial. Nevertheless,
consider how shocking this idea is! An enemy, in the proper sense, explicitly
wants our ill. To experience such aggression is genuinely dark. And there seem
to be only two options for reacting to it. You either respond aggressively in
kind, or you swallow the injustice and assume the role of a victim. In both
cases, the darkness of animosity is likely to swallow you. Animosity is bad; it
is a black hole that threatens to suck us in.
2. Jesus Proposes a Different Option: To react to
animosity with love means neither aggression nor victimization. Love does not
swallow injustice but dips it in light, thus vanquishing the toxic black hole.
How is such a thing possible? Who can illuminate a black hole? Only someone who
is the source of light itself. Herein lies Jesus’s glorious victory. For when
the enemy par excellence seized him, the source of goodness and the heart of
the world, and tried to swallow him in death, death could not quench his light.
On the contrary, his divine light filled the abyss of death and woke all those
who had been swallowed by it. Jesus’s heart vanquished death as it resumed
beating; his light erased the black hole; his love dissolved the relentless
power of the enemy.
3. How Can You Truly Love Your Enemy? Only in
Christ: When Jesus’s resurrected and glorified heart started to beat
again on the third day, it became the pulse that animates a new creation, one
in which we participate through grace beginning on the day of our Baptism.
Therefore, Jesus’s heart is the heart of the redeemed world and should become
our heart. When Jesus’s light started to illuminate the night, it started
spreading among the disciples he had bound to his heart as members of his body.
When Jesus’s love defeated and redeemed those who had killed him–his enemies–he
also called on his friends and empowered them through the gift of the Holy
Spirit to participate in this love. Jesus’s heart pumps love into his friends. All
of this means we can love our enemies in a truly redeeming way if we do so in
Christ and allow him to love in us if his heart becomes our heart.
Conversing with Christ: My Lord Jesus Christ, you look at me and see me. Sometimes,
with grief, you see an enemy in me, someone who is capable of sinning and thus
offending you. However, you always react to my animosity similarly: you love
and keep loving me. Your love has vanquished my sin and redeemed me from its
grip. And you offer me this gift repeatedly, as often as I fall back into the
traps of evil. Today, I thank you for your love and for your mercy. And I raise
my gaze to the horizon where I might see people that move against me, my
enemies. Lord, I have experienced how your love has saved me from the darkness.
Allow me, through your love, to love my enemies.
Resolution:
Lord, today, by your grace, I will examine where I need your help to love my
enemies. I want to love like you, love with and in you.
REFLECTION
It
is so easy for us to love those who are lovable and who love us in return.
In the Gospel
reading Jesus extends the commandment "to love your neighbor" to
"your enemies" and to "those who persecute you." Speaking
with the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law, he recalls to them the rule to
"love your neighbor and not do good to your enemy." He clearly states
this is not enough: for even tax-collectors and pagans do the same.
Jesus teaches us to love all, even the unlovable, even those who have
betrayed us, those who have hurt us and taken advantage of us. Love of neighbor
is much related to forgiveness of those who have offended us, those who have
transgressed against us. This comes from our Lord who at the cross prayed,
"Father, forgive them for they do not know what they do." (Lk 23: 34)
We can ask who our friends are: no problem about loving them and
being friendly and good to them. How about those we do not particularly like?
How can we show them love and friendship? How about those who have wronged us?
Can we forgive them and show them love and friendship? Hopefully we can do much
better than the tax collectors and pagans mentioned by our Lord!
And let us heed the
Lord's words, "As for you, be perfect as your heavenly Father is
perfect."
