First Week of Lent 2021
Rainbow An Assurance of God's Unconditional Love
First Week of Lent 2021
God is like that showing His ultimate Virtues to creation including human race. The history of Noah from the book of Genesis will help us to know how God is unconditionally everything. The Noah story begins with a notice of the depravity of the people. “When the Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on earth was, and how no desire that his heart conceived was ever anything but evil, he regretted that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was grieved.” Even still, the goodness of one man, Noah, kept God from destroying mankind. He protected Noah’s family and his creation from the flood. The main point is that God will not give up on man. This is the covenant with Noah and us. God will not give up on us.
The deluge reminds us of the fact that man’s disobedience and disloyalty to the divine Creator who fashioned all and presented gifts of body and mind to humanity as His own, and on the other side the magnanimity and the infinite forgiving mercy of God. He establishes a covenant with Noah, his family and all creatures that came out of the ark. When clouds gather on the sky as it happened before the floods, Noah and his descendants have no need to fear. Among the clouds they will see the colors of the rainbow assuring them that God is mindful of them and of the covenant of life he had promised.
Speaking of God’s promise of Rainbow, the covenant of God and creation specifies the steadfast care of God in mercy and life. To know this, we should also understand a little bit of how a rainbow is formed. A rainbow is a meteorological phenomenon that is caused by reflection, refraction, and dispersion of light in water droplets resulting in a spectrum of light appearing in the sky.
Light enters a water droplet, slowing down and bending as it goes from air to denser water. The light reflects off the inside of the droplet, separating into its component wavelengths. When light exits the droplet, it makes a rainbow. God’s amazing graces entering the lower surface, the human race, to go through to have the covenant of God, the unconditional, inseparable union. That is the Rainbow of the Lord, that’s the Bow of the Lord. We can see similar Covenantal Relationships throughout Salvation history. It is also explicit that He never made Contracts but always Covenants considering the humanity as equal as Him. Because that is what we are! His amazing image, the Most beautiful of everything.
By this bow God promised Noah and us that he will never give up on us. He loves us too much to give us up. No matter what our particular temptation in life is, we can withstand it as long as we face up to it with Him. We must take responsibility for our actions. Although we are tempted continually, and failed in the past, we have no right to give up on ourselves. We have no right to beat our personalities into submission and consider ourselves unfit to do the right thing. If God refuses to give up on us, then what right do we have to give up on ourselves? We can do it. If we reflect on how easy it is for us to slip into our old habits and have that negative thought that we have no chance of changing, then we have only to look at the Rainbow, keep the Covenant, tireless consistent love of God and know that God will never give up on us. We can change. We must change.
The temptation story of Jesus shows that we can do it. Lenten season is an opportunity to become family of Noah that God will care, protect, and love. Let this Lent for us be a building of Noah’s Arc, the Kingdom Jesus purchased. His love for us makes it possible.
Let the spectrum of Light reflect and shine on us.
Lent A Season To Admire Beauty Of God In Us
LENT A SEASON TO ADMIRE BEAUTY OF GOD IN US
The world is entering into the season of Lent, a holy and joyful season to lose and gain; to lose the weight of our body and soul, to gain the beautiful image God has fashioned on us which we destroyed through our inhuman (sins) ways. Most of all the religions in the world have this period of purification to be perfect, complete and joy in its full. “Be perfect, therefore, as my Heavenly Father is Perfect”.
What are the action plans we can engage in to achieve this awesomeness of God in us? This is where the season of Lent is a great opportunity to follow and to enjoy the greater Love of God. We speak of threefold pillars of Lent; Prayer, Fasting and Charity. All of these interlinked to achieve the image that was lost. I was talking to my parishioners about a weight loss program. Some of us act like as though we are created to eat and drink only, seems like a survival constant struggle. When we look in the mirror, most of us dislike ourselves. We do not like the way we look. We are spending money and energy buying food and eating much. We then spend more money and energy on weight loss products. Buying into this makes us double losers. If we are into this season, this is the 40 days challenge to lose weight and refashion beauty allowing the toxics of our body and soul to drain. I am talking about healthy way of Fasting to reenergize yourself to live in full strength and to utilize the bigger Talents invested on you by God the Creator. Meanwhile you will build up the Spiritual Beauty too. Second, the other areas of Fasting are from bad behaviors the many things we do on a regular basis. For example, if we have a habit of seeing only negative things, the dark areas of others, not entering our darkest areas. Living to appreciate the amazing beauty God’s creation, not the things we defiled and holding on.
Abstaining from them will lose the weight of our hearts. Every time someone hurts us, every time we are humiliated, and never able to come to a consensus of understanding our own failures, our heart builds up rocks, which can be as large as a mountain. When we fast from our bad habits, we roll down those rocks and take weight off our hearts. Then when we look in the mirror, we see the image of God that we are fashioned in. The three Pillars of Lent will bless us to melt down the rocks in our hearts to rejoice the fullness of God’s Grace. Let us remold our beautiful image by observing this Lent in a creative way. Following is some of the areas we can Feast and Fast during this season of opportunity and blessing.
Fast And Feast
Fast from Suspicion and Feast on Truth, Fast from Complaining and Feast on Appreciation, Fast from Judging and Feast on Christ Within Others, Fast from Idle Gossip and Feast on Purposeful Silence, Fast from Anger and Feast on Forgiveness, Fast from Discouragement and Feast on Hope, Fast from Worry and Feast on Trusting God, Fast from Unrelenting Pressures and Feast on Unceasing Prayer, Fast from Lethargy and Feast on Enthusiasm, Fast from indifferences and Feast on Unity, Fast from Thoughts of Illness and Feast on the Healing Power of God!
Wishing all the readers A Jollyful Season of Lent.
Dream of St. John Bosco for the Church
DREAM OF ST. JOHN BOSCO FOR CHURCH
St. John Bosco or Don Bosco as he was called in his day in Italy. He lived in the north of Italy, in Turin, during the nineteenth century. This was a time of great turmoil. A large and important part of Italy, including Rome, was governed by the Church and known as the Papal States. By 1870, the Vatican ceded all control of its territories to the united Italy, keeping only the one square mile now called the Vatican State. Added to this turmoil, a heretical group called the Waldensians were attacking Catholics in Northern Italy. This was the state of the Church that St. John Bosco served. God often communicated to Don Bosco through dreams. Don Bosco had a dream about the chaos of his times. This was his most important dream and also his best-known dream. The dream contained a message that Don Bosco was told to relay to the Holy Father, Pope Pius IX. In the dream Don Bosco saw a ship on the sea battling heavy waves and a fierce wind. It was a hurricane. Several times, the ship almost capsized, but its captain kept it afloat. As Don Bosco looked at the ship, he realized that the captain was Pope Pius IX and the ship was the Church. Suddenly Don Bosco found himself on the ship. It was terrifying. Waves kept crashing over the ship. It could not hold out much longer. Soon it would break apart, or capsize, or simply sink. But off in the distance, Don Bosco could see a safe harbor and calm water. At the entrance to the harbor there were two huge pillars. To get to the harbor, the Pope had to negotiate the ship between these pillars. As the ship drew closer to the pillars, the Pope could make out something on top of each pillar. On one pillar there was the Blessed Sacrament. On the second pillar, there was the Mary, the Mother of God. St. John Bosco explained to the Pope that he can get the Church through the chaos and turmoil by emphasizing devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and Devotion to the Blessed Mother.
The Lord is aware of our difficulties. He sees our turmoil. He will help us pilot our ship through the chaos to the safe harbor. However, as in Don Bosco’s dream, the Lord shows us that the way to the safe harbor is through our Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and to the Virgin Mary.
We need the Lord’s presence in the Eucharist. We need to feed on His flesh and drink His blood, as He tells us to do in the sixth chapter of John. We need the spiritual strength of the Eucharist to help us meet the challenges of life. We need to receive communion at least once a week. If we can, we should receive communion more often, daily if possible. And we need to have a deep devotion to our Mother, the Blessed Virgin. She is, as Pope Francis calls her, the one who untangles knots. She cares for us with a mother’s love and continually intercedes with her son for us. She will not stop asking for help for her children. We say the rosary, and should say it daily, because we trust her to bring our needs to her Son.
Let us strive our best to hold onto these two Pillars.