Con Người chúng ta thuộc về Thiên Chúa và được Ngài yêu thương vì chính chúng ta đã được tạo nên trong chính hình ảnh của Ngài, vì thế Ngài không bao giờ có ý định tiêu diệt con người chu1ng ta Nhưng Thiên Chúa luôn làm việc, và luôn có những kế hoạch mới cho cuộc sống của chúng ta trong tương lai. Điều quan trọng là chúng ta không nên để cho những sự tuyệt vọng hay những việc tiêu cực xâm chiếm tâm hồn của chúng ta khi chúng ta gặp phải những khó khăn; hãy tránh những sự buồn tủi hay hoài nghi vì cả hai thứ này đều là kẻ thù của chúng ta và chúng muốn tìm cách hủy hoại tâm hồn chúng ta. Đây là những lúc của sự đấu tranh, vì thế chúng ta cần phải biết dùng thời gian này để cầu nguyên, để cũng cố đức tin của chúng ta trong niểm hy vọng, Thiên Chúa không bao giờ ngủ và bỏ quên chúng ta.
Nếu như chúng ta chỉ biết cố gắng nắm bắt những ý tưởng mới để hoà nhập với cái tư duy cũ của chúng ta thì chúng ta chẳng khác gì như là người đổ rượu mới vào bầu da cũ, Vì bầu da cũ đã khộ cứng không thể chịu đựng sự lên men và sự ép nép của rượu mới, nên khi rượu mới lên men, thì bình da cũ không thể co giãn, đàn hồi nên phải vỡ ra, và như thế bình da cũ sẽ vỡ toang ra thì rượu mới trong bình cũng bị tuôn đổ ra bên ngoài.
Khi chúng ta đều có những suy nghĩ hay ý tưởng mới, hình ảnh mới, hay biểu tượng mới, và cách thấu hiểu thế giới mới, chúng ta cần phải tạo nên một tâm trí và tâm hồn mới để có thể chứa đựng chúng. Những ý tưởng cũ và cách làm việc cũ kỹ đôi khi cũng phải được đặt sang một bên, nếu chúng ta muốn phát triển và tiến lên về phía trước. Vì thế trong những môi trường mới, những ý tưởng mới cũng phải được áp dụng đối với những ý thức tâm linh của chúng ta, Như chân Phước Hồng Y John Newman nói: "Sống là để thay đổi; được hoàn hảo là phải có sự thay đổi thường xuyên. " Chúng ta hãy không nên cứng nhắc và sợ thay đổi và Đừng nên hay cứ bám víu thật chặt vào những gì quen thuộc mà nên biết thay đổi, cầu tiến và chấp nhận thay đổi của Giáo Hội.
Lạy Chúa xin hãy mỡ rộng tâm hồn và lòng trí của chúng con để chúng con có một tâm hồn biết cởi mở và cầu tiến.
Saturday 13th Week in Ordinary Time
“The wedding guests cannot mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them.” Today’s first reading illustrates the importance of the blessing of the father for his elder son. However, Rebekah wants her younger son Jacob to be blessed with these special blessings instead of her elder son Esau. Parents’ blessings are of the utmost importance in our lives. Therefore one of the Ten Commandments tells us to honour our parents.
In the Gospel Jesus tells us that as long as he is present with his disciples they need not fast. Jesus doesn’t undermine the importance of fasting in our spiritual journey. He himself fasted for forty days and forty nights before He began His public ministry. Fasting has indeed a great significance in our spiritual journey. It helps to be in communion with God. The disciples are already in the presence of the Lord. They are enjoying his company. Therefore they do not need to fast. That is what Jesus seems to be telling John’s disciples. Fasting is not end in itself. It is a means to come into the company of the Lord.
Lord, grant us the grace that we may respect our parents and always yearn for Your company.
Saturday 13th Ordinary time
No one patches an old cloak with a piece of unshrunken cloth, for its fullness pulls away from the cloak and the tear gets worse. People do not put new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise the skins burst, the wine spills out, and the skins are ruined. Rather, they pour new wine into fresh wineskins, and both are preserved.” Matthew 9:16–17
The parable above teaches us that even if someone were to faithfully understand and live the authentic Law that was given through Moses and the prophets, Jesus’ new teaching of grace, the New Law, was so different that it was not simply an improvement of the old, it completely replaced it. Furthermore, many of the customs taught by the Pharisees were unfaithful representations of the Law of Moses. They had deviated from the Law’s meaning and replaced it with their own scrupulous and erroneous multiplication of external practices. Thus, Jesus’ New Law needed to break away from these deviations completely.
To use a modern example, if you were to have an old phone that had become obsolete or stopped working, you wouldn’t buy a new phone so as to remove various parts from it to try to add those parts to the old phone to fix it. Instead, you use the new phone as a complete replacement for the old one.
A central quality of the New Law of grace is that it is entirely new and transforming. Therefore, by embracing this New Law, we become entirely new creations in Christ. Grace doesn’t simply patch that which is weak and sinful in us. It transforms us, elevating our human nature to an entirely new existence. This teaching is not only directed at the misguided teachings that the Pharisees had developed over the years, it was directed at human life itself. Not only were the Jewish customs to go through a transformation, humanity itself was to go through a transformation. Everything is made new in Christ.
This teaching applies just as much to us today as it did to the Jewish people of old. Today, we not only receive the new life of grace in Baptism, but we also receive it anew and share in this ongoing transforming renewal every time we allow grace to touch us more deeply and transform us more fully into the people God wants us to be. The “new patch” and the “new wine” are always transforming, and we must look forward to this newness throughout our lives.
Reflect, today, upon the joyful discovery that awaits you every day. Discovering the New Law of grace, accepting it into your life, and allowing it to transform you will set you on a path of discovery that will never get old. It is an ongoing discovery that is far greater than anything this world has to offer. Nothing can ever compare to the gift of God alive in our lives. It will never get old. It will always be transforming. And it will always be new. Ponder this gift God offers you today and say “Yes” to it with all your heart.
My transforming Lord, You continuously offer to renew me, transform me and elevate me to the life of grace. I thank You for this Gift and desire to accept it with all my heart. May I always be ready and willing to say “Yes” to You and the transformation that awaits me as I discover this ever new treasure of Your Grace. Jesus, I trust in You.
Saturday 13th Ordinary time 2025
Opening Prayer: Lord God, you have united me and espoused me to yourself through your Son and the gift of your Spirit. I am yours, and you are my God. Speak tenderly to me and guide me by the hand to your eternal embrace.
Encountering the Word of God
1. Fasting in the New Covenant: The question about fasting comes from the disciples of John the Baptist. John emphasized detachment from the things of this world and from sin. He fasted, didn’t drink alcohol, and lived an austere life in the wilderness. John was not the divine bridegroom. He was the bridegroom’s “best man.” He prepared the bride to meet her husband. Jesus is the bridegroom, and while he is with us, we should feast and rejoice. However, Jesus has also been taken away from us at the crucifixion. And so, in the time of the New Covenant, established at the Last Supper and on the Cross, there is both a cause for fasting and for feasting. We fast during Lent and are encouraged to make a sacrifice at meals, especially on Fridays, throughout the year (see Code of Canon Law, can. 1251). Fasting from good things helps us strengthen our will so that it can withstand the temptation to sin and vice.
2. Jacob and Esau: Isaac’s wife, Rebekah, gave birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. Their fraternal rivalry began at birth. Esau was the firstborn, but Jacob came out of the womb holding on to Esau’s foot, “a sign of things to come since ‘to grasp the heel,’ from which Jacob receives his name, is a Hebrew idiom that can mean ‘to deceive’ or ‘supplant.’ As the brothers grow up, Isaac favors Esau while Rebekah loves Jacob best. When Isaac is old and close to death, he calls his firstborn son, Esau, to him and tells him to hunt game and make a meal, after which Isaac will pass on to Esau the blessing” (Gray and Cavins, Walking with God, 52).
3. Jacob’s Desire for the Blessing of the Covenant: God had already indicated at their birth that Jacob would receive the blessing (Genesis 25:23). And the reader of the story of Jacob in Genesis knows that Esau had already sold the blessing of the firstborn son for a bowl of lentils (Genesis 25:29-34). The latter story shows that Esau was somewhat indifferent to the blessing. Esau, while not wholly bad, is indifferent to his covenant status as the firstborn and preferred the earthly good of a meal to the spiritual blessing won from him by his younger brother. Jacob, by contrast, is notable for his desire to be heir of the covenant. He greatly desires God’s blessing. “Although the sacred author does not with the people of God to emulate everything about Jacob …, his passionate desire to claim the covenant and receive the blessing are held up as models for the national character [of Israel]” (Bergsma and Pitre, A Catholic Introduction to the Bible: The Old Testament, 145).
Conversing with Christ: Lord Jesus, you are my bridegroom. You have given me the gift of new wineskins – the New Covenant – and filled them with the new wine of salvation. Help me to appreciate each day these gifts that you have given to your Bride, the Church. Wash me clean in the water of the Spirit and in your Blood.
Saturday 13th Ordinary time
Opening Prayer: Lord, let me better understand your word during this time of prayer. I want to be like the wedding guests who are in the presence of the bridegroom, unable to mourn because of intimacy with you. You ask me to detach myself from the things of this world that keep me from you; enlighten me to know what these things are, and strengthen me to give them up, assured of the hope of something infinitely better.
Encountering Christ:
1. This One Is Different: Both John the Baptist and Jesus were accompanied by groups of men who were edified by their words and deeds. These people bore the label “disciple,” from the Latin word meaning student, learner, or follower. Those who followed John would have learned from their teacher about certain differences between him and Jesus, particularly in stature: “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire" (Luke 3:16). These disciples, some of whom would have seen a dove land on the newly baptized Jesus, and heard a voice from Heaven saying, “This is my son” (Matthew 3:16-17), had not yet discovered the most profound difference between these two teachers, one of essence, which John had discerned from his first encounter with the divine Jesus—causing him to leap in St. Elizabeth’s womb (Luke 1:41).
2. The Bridegroom Is with Us: Clear differences also existed between the practices of the two bands of disciples. For instance, one group often observed a fast and the other did not. Without a doubt, each teacher preached of the need for repentance, which can be manifested in many ways. “Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others” (CCC 1434). Jesus’ disciples did not fast in the presence of “the bridegroom,” the continual source for their joy. Today, while we have access to the bridegroom in the Eucharist, we also long for that continual union with him in joy for all eternity. St. John of the Cross once said that we cannot rise up to God if we are bound to the things of this world, reminding us that fasting from things we enjoy is a preparation for Heaven.
3. New Wine, Fresh Skins: Another preparation for Heaven, of course, is to reconcile with God while here on earth, by confessing our sins to “the bridegroom” in humble contrition. With souls absolved of sin, we, like new wineskins, can more effectively receive the “new wine” that Christ has in store for us, an outpouring of his grace. If we wonder what beautiful gifts a pure soul might accept from the Lord, we can look to our Blessed Mother. The Immaculate One, preserved from the stain of sin from the moment of her conception, was the epitome of a “new wineskin.” It was to this beautiful earthen vessel that the Angel Gabriel was able to proclaim “Hail, full of grace,” seeking her fiat to become the bride of the Holy Spirit, and set in motion God’s plan of salvation. May we also cooperate with God’s plan, keeping our souls clean and ready to accept God’s grace with deep gratitude.
Conversing with Christ: I thank you, Lord, for your invitation to me to enter into prayer with you. You are the bridegroom who is always attentive to his bride, the Church, into which you adopted me at my baptism. Let me gratefully appreciate the grace you poured out on that day and each time I return to you in your sacraments. Make me a “fresh wineskin,” always ready to receive from you.
Resolution: Lord, today by your grace I will read (or sing) the lyrics of the hymn “How Can I Keep From Singing?” and consider the joy that flows from the bridegroom’s invitation to be members of his bride, the Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment