Suy Niệm Tin Mừng Thứ Năm tuần thứ 5 Phục Sinh
“Không phải anh em đã chọn thầy, Nhưng chính thầy đã chọn anh em.”
Chúng ta được Chúa kêu gọi và chọn để theo Ngài, Ngài đã “xin” chúng ta thực hiện một sự cam kết với Ngài, đó là đáp lại lời mời gọi của Chúa. Ngài đã chọn chúng ta, và chúng ta phải đáp trả lại bằng tất cả tình yêu và cuộc sống của chúng ta. Chúa Giêsu nói với chúng ta là Ngài yêu thương chúng ta, và Ngài cũng “nài xin” chúng ta hãy yêu thương Ngài cũng như yêu thương những người chung quanh.
Chúng ta hãy tạ ơn Chúa hôm nay vì Ngài đã ngỏ lời mời chúng ta đến với Ngài trong tình yêu và trong sự trung tín của Ngài. Chúng ta cũng hãy xin Chúa cho chúng ta những ân sủng để chúng ta có thể thực sự cam kết với Ngài. Xin cho tất cả những gì chúng ta làm, là làm trong hành động của tình yêu, trong lòng biết ơn đối với tình yêu mà Ngài đã luôn tỏ ra cho chúng ta thấy được..
REFLECTION
Jesus makes this very clear in today's Gospel reading when he says: "You did not choose me, it was I who chose you." Our choice to follow Jesus is important, but far more significant is his choice to be committed to us. Jesus loves us with a love that is so committed, so dedicated that it takes him to Calvary for us. Our lack of faithfulness to him never changes his faithful love for us.
The life of St. Mathias, the saint whose feast we celebrate today, also shows us that what matters most is the Lord's commitment to us. In the first reading, Mathias was chosen to be one of the twelve apostles after Jesus' death and resurrection. He was the replacement for Judas who after betraying Jesus committed suicide. The Apostles drew lots and he won. It was not exactly his decision. Mathias knew that he had not decided to be one of the twelve. He had been chosen by Jesus Christ.
We are all called and chosen by the Lord. He asks us to make a commitment to him, but the commitment can only be a response to Jesus' call. He has chosen us, and our whole life is to be a response of love to that call. It is a bit like a wedding proposal. Jesus asks us, invites us and proposes to us. He tells us that he loves us, and he asks that we will love him in return. Let us thank the Lord today for his invitation of love and for being faithful. Let us also ask him for the grace to be really committed to him. May all that we do be an act of love in gratitude for the love that he keeps showering upon us.
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter 2023
“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” John 15:10
When Jesus spoke the line above, He followed it by saying, “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” These two lines, taken side by side, provide a helpful unity of Jesus’ teaching regarding holy obedience to Him.
First, Jesus speaks of the necessity of keeping His commandments. To some, such a statement, when taken by itself, can seem burdensome, dictatorial, oppressive and confining. But is it? The answer is found clearly as we read on.
The next thing Jesus teaches is that the effect of keeping His commandments is that we “remain in His love.” He further explains that He is not asking us to do anything that He Himself was not willing to do. He was obedient to the will of the Father, keeping the commandments of the Father to perfection. Therefore, we should hear His command as a dictate flowing from His own freely lived choice to be obedient. As the Incarnate Son of God, He perfectly obeyed the Father in His human nature. The result was that He remained perfectly filled with the love of the Father. But that’s not all. Joy is also experienced in a “complete” way when we imitate Jesus’ perfect obedience.
In light of the teaching from our Lord, how do you view holy obedience to the will of God? Take, for example, each of the Ten Commandments. Do you struggle with unwavering obedience to them? Do you experience them as oppressive and imposed limitations rather than what they truly are? When understood correctly, the Ten Commandments, and every other dictate of the will of God, are exactly what we need and, even more so, exactly what we deeply desire in life. We want interior order rather than chaos. We want integrity rather than fragility. We want joy rather than sadness. And we want unity with the love of God rather than the loss of God. The path to the life we so deeply desire is obedience to the commands of the will of God in all things.
Reflect, today, upon your immediate interior reaction to holy obedience. If you do find yourself resistant in any way to this teaching of Jesus, then that is a good sign that you need this teaching more than you may know. Try to look at obedience in the light of truth. Try to see that, deep down, your soul yearns for obedience and the interior order it brings. Examine, especially, any areas of obedience you struggle with and firmly recommit yourself to unwavering obedience to each and every command of our Lord.
My obedient Lord, You obeyed the will of Your Father in Heaven to perfection. Through this obedience, You not only experienced the full love and joy of the Father in Your human nature, You also set for us a perfect example and model for holiness. Help me to see the areas of my life in which I need to be more obedient, so that I, too, will share in Your holy life and that of the Father’s. Jesus, I trust in You.
Thursday of the Fifth Week of Easter 2023
Opening Prayer: God my Father, I delight in your commandments and thank you for your love. Grant me the grace to remain in your love. Teach us to love one another.
2. Friendship: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” It is not always easy to be God’s friend, but we do have many great examples of saints who have preceded us in the faith. “It was because of his faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain…It was through his faith that Noah […] took care to build an ark to save his family…It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance…Isaac, Jacob, Moses. What more shall I say? There is not time for me to give an account of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, or of David, Samuel, and the prophets” (cf. Hebrews 11). By faith, God’s friends kept his commandments. We are Jesus’s friends because he has shared everything with us, including his life and saving message. “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”
3. Choice: St. Matthias was chosen by lot to join the ranks of the apostles and be numbered among the Eleven. Christ also chooses us for a specific purpose. “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.” Being chosen and being desired by God is existential bedrock. We thrive when needed, admired, and–in a spousal relationship–desired. How sad to find a bride despised by her husband or a child unwanted by his parents! With God, we are set on rock. “No more will you be called ‘Forsaken,’ nor your land called ‘Desolate,’ but you shall be called ‘My Delight is in her,’ and your land ‘Espoused.’ For the Lord delights in you… And you shall be called ‘Cared For,’ a ‘City Not Forsaken’” (Isaiah 62). God yearns for us. We are his joy, his friends, and his desire. He loves us with all the loving power of God himself. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Love him.
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you are my light and my salvation. You are my best friend, the joy of my heart. Stay with me always. Give me the grace to keep your commandments, knowing that your joy is in me.
REFLECTION
To remain in God's love is a twofold process: we are his beloved, and we are called to love others as he loves us. It is crucial that we make an effort to remain in his love. When we are in union with Jesus, all our thoughts, emotions, intentions and actions are directed to him. His love is there, giving us the source of strength we need as we sustain and build relationships with those around us - family, friends, colleagues at work, our community. In psychological developmental stages, there is a stage of crisis between intimacy and isolation. Jesus' call to love is manifest when we are able to nurture healthy, loving relationships. When we are able to draw others (and sometimes even ourselves) out of isolation, out of our loneliness - we see the power of Jesus' love at work.
Oftentimes we have a lot of requirements when it comes to accepting God's love for us and sharing it with others. We would rather stay within the comfort zone of doing the minimum requirements as followers of Christ - loving only when it is easy and convenient to do so. But God's love cannot be contained within the parameters we set around it his love calls us to complete obedience to his will. The obedience that Jesus asks of us is not obedience to worldly rules, but to the Father who is pure, total love. Obedience means following his commandment to love others with our whole heart, mind, soul and self. A love that brings out the best in people, for God's love is perfect.
With Jesus dwelling in us, we, too, must dwell in him. Dwelling in Jesus means that we are steadfast in our promise to walk with him, to journey with him. When we dwell in his love, there is no room for selfishness and pride, but there are wide-open spaces where faith, happiness, harmony, goodness, truth and grace can reside. Our union with him is intimate - we are embraced in his loving arms, we are invited to dance with him, to share in his joy for which we were created and which brings the deepest fulfillment to our lives. "To live in Jesus" is to live in Jesus' love.
Reflection SG. 2016
Yesterday’s gospel gave us one of the most beautiful images that Jesus used to describe the unity and communion between Himself and His disciples friends. Like a vine and its branches, He said. And His Father like the one who tends and cares for vine and branches. In the next verses (today’s reading), He reveals how His love for His friends is just like the way His Father loves Him. It’s an extension of His Father’s love, drawing us all into the life of God Himself. Jesus urges His friends to “abide” (‘live’, ‘remain’) in His love.
Jesus told His disciples about His love for them in order to share His love, and especially to share the joy He had in being loved by His Father and in loving us. ‘Joy’ is perhaps the most important word in all this, for love surely implies joy and rejoicing in the one we love and are loved by. There is no joy in merely keeping rules, but Jesus wanted our joy to be complete.
Lord, You are our joy and fulfillment.
“Không phải anh em đã chọn thầy, Nhưng chính thầy đã chọn anh em.”
Chúng ta được Chúa kêu gọi và chọn để theo Ngài, Ngài đã “xin” chúng ta thực hiện một sự cam kết với Ngài, đó là đáp lại lời mời gọi của Chúa. Ngài đã chọn chúng ta, và chúng ta phải đáp trả lại bằng tất cả tình yêu và cuộc sống của chúng ta. Chúa Giêsu nói với chúng ta là Ngài yêu thương chúng ta, và Ngài cũng “nài xin” chúng ta hãy yêu thương Ngài cũng như yêu thương những người chung quanh.
Chúng ta hãy tạ ơn Chúa hôm nay vì Ngài đã ngỏ lời mời chúng ta đến với Ngài trong tình yêu và trong sự trung tín của Ngài. Chúng ta cũng hãy xin Chúa cho chúng ta những ân sủng để chúng ta có thể thực sự cam kết với Ngài. Xin cho tất cả những gì chúng ta làm, là làm trong hành động của tình yêu, trong lòng biết ơn đối với tình yêu mà Ngài đã luôn tỏ ra cho chúng ta thấy được..
Jesus makes this very clear in today's Gospel reading when he says: "You did not choose me, it was I who chose you." Our choice to follow Jesus is important, but far more significant is his choice to be committed to us. Jesus loves us with a love that is so committed, so dedicated that it takes him to Calvary for us. Our lack of faithfulness to him never changes his faithful love for us.
The life of St. Mathias, the saint whose feast we celebrate today, also shows us that what matters most is the Lord's commitment to us. In the first reading, Mathias was chosen to be one of the twelve apostles after Jesus' death and resurrection. He was the replacement for Judas who after betraying Jesus committed suicide. The Apostles drew lots and he won. It was not exactly his decision. Mathias knew that he had not decided to be one of the twelve. He had been chosen by Jesus Christ.
We are all called and chosen by the Lord. He asks us to make a commitment to him, but the commitment can only be a response to Jesus' call. He has chosen us, and our whole life is to be a response of love to that call. It is a bit like a wedding proposal. Jesus asks us, invites us and proposes to us. He tells us that he loves us, and he asks that we will love him in return. Let us thank the Lord today for his invitation of love and for being faithful. Let us also ask him for the grace to be really committed to him. May all that we do be an act of love in gratitude for the love that he keeps showering upon us.
“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.” John 15:10
When Jesus spoke the line above, He followed it by saying, “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” These two lines, taken side by side, provide a helpful unity of Jesus’ teaching regarding holy obedience to Him.
First, Jesus speaks of the necessity of keeping His commandments. To some, such a statement, when taken by itself, can seem burdensome, dictatorial, oppressive and confining. But is it? The answer is found clearly as we read on.
The next thing Jesus teaches is that the effect of keeping His commandments is that we “remain in His love.” He further explains that He is not asking us to do anything that He Himself was not willing to do. He was obedient to the will of the Father, keeping the commandments of the Father to perfection. Therefore, we should hear His command as a dictate flowing from His own freely lived choice to be obedient. As the Incarnate Son of God, He perfectly obeyed the Father in His human nature. The result was that He remained perfectly filled with the love of the Father. But that’s not all. Joy is also experienced in a “complete” way when we imitate Jesus’ perfect obedience.
In light of the teaching from our Lord, how do you view holy obedience to the will of God? Take, for example, each of the Ten Commandments. Do you struggle with unwavering obedience to them? Do you experience them as oppressive and imposed limitations rather than what they truly are? When understood correctly, the Ten Commandments, and every other dictate of the will of God, are exactly what we need and, even more so, exactly what we deeply desire in life. We want interior order rather than chaos. We want integrity rather than fragility. We want joy rather than sadness. And we want unity with the love of God rather than the loss of God. The path to the life we so deeply desire is obedience to the commands of the will of God in all things.
Reflect, today, upon your immediate interior reaction to holy obedience. If you do find yourself resistant in any way to this teaching of Jesus, then that is a good sign that you need this teaching more than you may know. Try to look at obedience in the light of truth. Try to see that, deep down, your soul yearns for obedience and the interior order it brings. Examine, especially, any areas of obedience you struggle with and firmly recommit yourself to unwavering obedience to each and every command of our Lord.
My obedient Lord, You obeyed the will of Your Father in Heaven to perfection. Through this obedience, You not only experienced the full love and joy of the Father in Your human nature, You also set for us a perfect example and model for holiness. Help me to see the areas of my life in which I need to be more obedient, so that I, too, will share in Your holy life and that of the Father’s. Jesus, I trust in You.
Opening Prayer: God my Father, I delight in your commandments and thank you for your love. Grant me the grace to remain in your love. Teach us to love one another.
2. Friendship: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” It is not always easy to be God’s friend, but we do have many great examples of saints who have preceded us in the faith. “It was because of his faith that Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain…It was through his faith that Noah […] took care to build an ark to save his family…It was by faith that Abraham obeyed the call to set out for a country that was the inheritance…Isaac, Jacob, Moses. What more shall I say? There is not time for me to give an account of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, or of David, Samuel, and the prophets” (cf. Hebrews 11). By faith, God’s friends kept his commandments. We are Jesus’s friends because he has shared everything with us, including his life and saving message. “I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”
3. Choice: St. Matthias was chosen by lot to join the ranks of the apostles and be numbered among the Eleven. Christ also chooses us for a specific purpose. “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.” Being chosen and being desired by God is existential bedrock. We thrive when needed, admired, and–in a spousal relationship–desired. How sad to find a bride despised by her husband or a child unwanted by his parents! With God, we are set on rock. “No more will you be called ‘Forsaken,’ nor your land called ‘Desolate,’ but you shall be called ‘My Delight is in her,’ and your land ‘Espoused.’ For the Lord delights in you… And you shall be called ‘Cared For,’ a ‘City Not Forsaken’” (Isaiah 62). God yearns for us. We are his joy, his friends, and his desire. He loves us with all the loving power of God himself. “As the Father loves me, so I also love you.” Love him.
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you are my light and my salvation. You are my best friend, the joy of my heart. Stay with me always. Give me the grace to keep your commandments, knowing that your joy is in me.
To remain in God's love is a twofold process: we are his beloved, and we are called to love others as he loves us. It is crucial that we make an effort to remain in his love. When we are in union with Jesus, all our thoughts, emotions, intentions and actions are directed to him. His love is there, giving us the source of strength we need as we sustain and build relationships with those around us - family, friends, colleagues at work, our community. In psychological developmental stages, there is a stage of crisis between intimacy and isolation. Jesus' call to love is manifest when we are able to nurture healthy, loving relationships. When we are able to draw others (and sometimes even ourselves) out of isolation, out of our loneliness - we see the power of Jesus' love at work.
Oftentimes we have a lot of requirements when it comes to accepting God's love for us and sharing it with others. We would rather stay within the comfort zone of doing the minimum requirements as followers of Christ - loving only when it is easy and convenient to do so. But God's love cannot be contained within the parameters we set around it his love calls us to complete obedience to his will. The obedience that Jesus asks of us is not obedience to worldly rules, but to the Father who is pure, total love. Obedience means following his commandment to love others with our whole heart, mind, soul and self. A love that brings out the best in people, for God's love is perfect.
With Jesus dwelling in us, we, too, must dwell in him. Dwelling in Jesus means that we are steadfast in our promise to walk with him, to journey with him. When we dwell in his love, there is no room for selfishness and pride, but there are wide-open spaces where faith, happiness, harmony, goodness, truth and grace can reside. Our union with him is intimate - we are embraced in his loving arms, we are invited to dance with him, to share in his joy for which we were created and which brings the deepest fulfillment to our lives. "To live in Jesus" is to live in Jesus' love.
Yesterday’s gospel gave us one of the most beautiful images that Jesus used to describe the unity and communion between Himself and His disciples friends. Like a vine and its branches, He said. And His Father like the one who tends and cares for vine and branches. In the next verses (today’s reading), He reveals how His love for His friends is just like the way His Father loves Him. It’s an extension of His Father’s love, drawing us all into the life of God Himself. Jesus urges His friends to “abide” (‘live’, ‘remain’) in His love.
Jesus told His disciples about His love for them in order to share His love, and especially to share the joy He had in being loved by His Father and in loving us. ‘Joy’ is perhaps the most important word in all this, for love surely implies joy and rejoicing in the one we love and are loved by. There is no joy in merely keeping rules, but Jesus wanted our joy to be complete.
Lord, You are our joy and fulfillment.
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