Suy Niệm Tin Mừng (thứ Hai Ngày 30/12 2024) trong Tuần Bát Nhật Giáng Sinh
Chúng ta có hy vọng gì? Niềm hy vọng với Thiên Chúa trong trái tim của chúng ta là sự ham muốn Nước Trời và sự sống đời đời là hạnh phúc của chúng ta. Niềm htrong bài Tin Mừng hôm nay, Bà là nổi tiếng về lòng đạo đức, bà là một người phụ nữ có niềm hy vọng to lớn là đặt kỳ vọng tất cả vào Thiên Chúa và Ngài sẽ thực hiện tất cả những lời hứa của Ngài. Với ơn Thánh Thần, bà đã sống hàng ngày trong đền thánh Chúa, bà cầu nguyện ngày đêm và nói tiên tri cho những người khác biết về lời hứa của Thiên Chúa là Ngài sẽ đem đến cho nhân loại một đấng cứu chuộc. Bà là một mô hình của sự tin kính cho tất cả chúng ta, khi chúng ta lớn lên và thăng tiến theo độ tuổi.
Tuổi tác và sự thất vọng trong cuộc sống có thể làm cho chúng ta dễ dàng hoài nghi và thất vọng nếu như chúng ta không có niềm hy vọng của chúng ta được đặt đúng chỗ và có niềm tin, hy vọng một cách đúng đắn. Niềm Hy vọng của bà Anna trong Thiên Chúa và những lời hứa của Ngài lớn lên với tuổi già của bà! Bà không bao giờ nản chí và ngừng thờ phượng Thiên Chúa trong đức tin và sự cầu nguyện trong niềm hy vọng. Hy vọng và niềm tin vào những lời hứa của Thiên Chúa thúc đẩy sự nhiệt tình, sự bất khuất của bà và sự nhiệt tình trong lời cầu nguyện và phục vụ dân Chúa. Làm thế nào để chúng ta có thể được sống và trưởng thành trong niềm hy vọng? Bằng cách đặt niềm tin của chúng ta vào những lời hứa của Chúa Giêsu Kitô và không nhờ vào sức riêng của mình, nhưng dựa trên những ân sủng và sự giúp đỡ của Chúa Thánh Thần. Chúng ta có đặt hy vọng và sự nhiệt tình của chúng ta nơi Thiên Chúa khi chúng ta lớn lên và trưởng thành theo tuổi tác của của ta?
"Lạy Chúa Giêsu, Xin đừng để chúng con bao giờ ngừng hy vọng nơi Chúa và ngừng tin tưởng vào những lời hứa của Chúa. Xin đốt lên ngọn lửa tình yêu và làm hâm nóng nhiệt huyết của chúng con cho Nước Chúa và gia tăng tình yêu của Chúng con dành cho việc cầu nguyện, để chúng con có thể không bao giờ ngừng chúc tụng, khen ngợi và thờ phượng Chúa.
Meditation The 6th day in the Octave of Christmas
What do you hope for? The hope which God places in our heart is the desire for the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness. Hope grows with prayer and perseverance. Anna was pre-eminently a woman of great hope and expectation that God would fulfill all his promises. Filled with the Holy Spirit, she was found daily in the house of the Lord, attending to the Lord in prayer and speaking prophetically to others about the Lord's promise to send a redeemer. She is a model of godliness to all believers as we advance in age.
Advancing age and the disappointments of life can easily make us cynical and hopeless if we do not have our hope placed rightly. Anna's hope in God and his promises grew with age! She never ceased to worship God in faith and to pray with hope. Her hope and faith in God's promises fueled her indomitable zeal and fervor in prayer and service of God's people.
How do we grow in hope? By placing our trust in the promises of Jesus Christ and relying not on our own strength, but on the grace and help of the Holy Spirit. Does your hope and fervor for God grow with age?
"Lord Jesus, may I never cease to hope in you and to trust in your promises. Inflame my zeal for your kingdom and increase my love for prayer that I may never cease to give you praise and worship".
A people who have walked in darkness, have seen a great light. Anna, like Simeon, was also part of that people shrouded in darkness; but her faith in the faithfulness of God, prepared Anna for her encounter with her salvation in the person of the child Jesus. Disciplined by prayer and vigil, on seeing Jesus she immediately began to give thanks to God, who was faithful to his covenant and sent the messiah to those “looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.”
Anna was at peace on seeing the child Jesus, on seeing her “Christmas.” How peaceful are we after experiencing our “Christmas” yet again? Christmas is about the birth of a child, so we live and walk in hope, hopeful of the future. Christmas is about the birth of a child who is at once eternal and new, divine and human. Christmas is about the quest for truth and for goodness; the quest to quiet one's inner fears; the quest to find the secret for living authentic human lives. Look to the Christ child, growing strong, increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. This child holds the answers to your deepest desires and needs.
Christmas is a season for one’s personal hopes to be reborn and re-energized as we commemorate again and afresh, the coming of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. “Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice.”
Sixth Day in the Octave of Christmas, December 30
There was a prophetess, Anna…She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem. Luke 2:36–38
We all have a unique and sacred calling given to us from God. Each one of us is called to fulfill that calling with generosity and wholehearted commitment. As the famous prayer of Saint John Henry Newman puts it:
God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons…
Anna, the prophetess, was given a very unique, one-of-a-kind mission. When she was young, she was married for seven years. Then after losing her husband, she remained a widow until she was eighty-four. During those decades of her life, the Scripture reveals that “She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer.” What an incredible calling from God!
Anna’s unique calling was to be a prophetess. She fulfilled this calling by allowing her whole life to be a symbol of the Christian vocation. Her life was spent in prayer, fasting and, most especially, in anticipation. God called her to wait, year after year, decade after decade, for the one and definitive moment of her life: her encounter with the Christ Child in the Temple.
Anna’s prophetic life tells us that we each must live our lives in such a way that our ultimate goal is to continually prepare for the moment when we meet our divine Lord in the Temple of Heaven. Unlike Anna, most are not called to literal fasting and prayer every day all day within the church buildings. But like Anna, we must all foster an interior life of ongoing prayer and penance, and we must direct all of our actions in life to the praise and glory of God and the salvation of our souls. Though the way this universal vocation is lived out will be unique to each and every person, Anna’s life is nonetheless a symbolic prophecy of every vocation.
Reflect, today, upon how well you imitate this holy woman in your own life. Do you foster an interior life of prayer and penance and daily seek to devote yourself to the glory of God and the salvation of your soul? Evaluate your life this day in light of the wonderful prophetic life of Anna that we are given to ponder.
Lord, I thank You for the powerful witness of the prophetess Anna. May her lifelong devotion to You, a life of continual prayer and sacrifice, be a model and inspiration for me and for all who follow You. I pray that You daily reveal to me the unique way in which I am called to live out my vocation to total dedication to You. Jesus, I trust in You.
The 6th day in the Octave of Christmas 2024
Opening Prayer: Lord God, fill me with your Spirit so that I may testify to your love and the love of your Son in this world. I am a prophet by my baptism, and only with your grace can I live out my prophetic vocation.
Encountering the Word of God
1. The Symbolism of the Prophetess Anna’s Age: In the Gospel, we meet Anna, an elderly prophetess from the ancient northern tribe of Asher. Luke gives special attention to her age, 84, which has the symbolic meaning of 7 (perfection) times 12 (the number of tribes of Israel). She was likely married at 14, lived with her husband for 7 years until she was 21, and has been a widow for the last 63 years. While Mary represents Israel as a virgin mother, Anna represents Israel as a suffering widow. The three stages of Anna’s life parallel three stages in Israel’s history. The years of her youth refer to the time of preparation for the kingdom of Israel. The 7 years of her marriage refer to the time of the Davidic kings, who acted as royal husbands. The long years of widowhood indicate the time of Israel’s and Judah’s exile and the time of waiting for the restoration of the kingdom. Anna is now 84, and this indicates that Israel’s story is being brought to fulfillment and that the prophecies, like those of Isaiah, are being fulfilled: “The reproach of your widowhood no longer remember. For your husband is your Maker; the Lord of hosts is his name, Your redeemer, the Holy One of Israel” (Isaiah 54:4-5; see 62:4-5, 12). “Isaiah is portraying the Lord God as Israel’s bridegroom redeemer – that is, the kinsman who redeems a childless widow by marrying her (see Ruth 4:5-6, 14)” (Gadenz, The Gospel of Luke, 72). Anna’s story is coupled with that of Simeon, who, like her, was waiting for God to bring about the “consolation of Israel” and the “redemption of Jerusalem.” Anna and Simeon represent the prophets, who, inspired by the Holy Spirit, communicated God’s Word to the people of Israel. Anna and Simeon both pointed to Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, Consoler, Savior, Bridegroom, and Redeemer of Israel.
2. Kings: The opening two chapters of Luke’s Gospel – which we frequently read from and meditate on during Advent and Christmas – not only show how Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecies in the Old Testament but also that Jesus was the true king. Herod the Great was the King of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth (Luke 1:5). But he was just a puppet king appointed by the Roman Senate in 40 B.C. Herod forcibly took control of Jerusalem in 37 B.C. when he defeated the Hasmonean king and high priest Antigonus II. Herod, though, was not the true king of Israel. He was not a royal descendant of David, and he only reigned as a client-king of Caesar Augustus. In his Gospel, Luke subtly takes all the titles that Caesar Augustus claimed to have and gives them to Jesus, the real and true King of the entire universe. Caesar Augustus claimed to be the son of a god and the savior of the world and exercised his authority by decreeing an enrollment or census of the entire world (Luke 2:1). Jesus, by contrast, is truly the Son of God and Savior. He is Lord over all creation. And as our true king, Jesus isn’t interested in extending his empire through military conquests or increasing his wealth through taxation. He doesn’t need a census to know us, for, as our good shepherd, he knows each one of us by name. Jesus wants to reign in our hearts and in our society and extend his justice, peace, charity, and mercy to all humanity.
3. Priests: Luke’s narrative about the births of John and Jesus also focuses on the priesthood and the Temple. Earlier, we learned about Zechariah and his encounter with Gabriel in the Temple. The old priesthood was coming to an end, and a new priesthood would be inaugurated by Jesus. The Holy of Holies of the old Temple was empty when Zechariah burned incense for the evening sacrifice. The old Ark of the Covenant was not there. And so, when Luke tells the story of Mary traveling from Galilee to the hill country of Judah and then later to Jerusalem, he points to her as the new Ark of the Covenant, who had in her womb the Word of God, the Bread of Life, and the eternal High Priest. The story of Jesus’ birth, then, highlights how the ancient prophecies are fulfilled and how we are called to be prophets in the world by announcing the salvation that Jesus brings. It highlights how Jesus is Lord of all and how we are called to share in Jesus’ royal office by extending the Kingdom of God throughout the world. Finally, it highlights the new priesthood inaugurated by Jesus and how we are called to offer ourselves to God as a pleasing sacrifice.
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you are the faithful and merciful High Priest, who intercedes for me at the Father’s right hand. As the Word of God, you are the Prophet who is greater than Moses. You are the King, who reigns forever at the right hand of the Father.
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