By
Rev. Joe McCloskey, SJ
The
spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me; he has
sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a
year of favor from the LORD and a day of vindication by our God. Isaiah 61:1-2A
Do
not quench the Spirit.
1 Thessalonians 5:19
“Why
then do you baptize if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the Prophet?” John answered them, “I baptize with water;
but there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming
after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.” John 1:25-27
Piety
Piety brings rejoicing into our lives because
of the closeness of God’s love to us.
The Resurrection grace is the joy of the Lord coming back to tell us
that all his human life was worthwhile because it makes us, in our
companionship with Christ, new children to God.
We are God’s children by our relationship with Christ. Piety brings us closer and closer to Christ
even as it makes us God’s children. We
rejoice because the joy of Christ resurrection is in us. It is the whole life of Christ that has given
us salvation. Any part of it could have
been our salvation. We rejoice that our
humanness has a God meaning to it in God loving us so much that he wanted to be
one of us. We look at the beginning of
his life and feel the joy of his coming that is a taste of the final coming
when our joy will be complete. Great
expectations give form and meaning to our preparations for the birth of
Christ. Our piety is the form our being
saved by Christ is expressed.
Study
The prophet Isaiah tells us that the Lord
anointed us to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to announce a
year of favor from the Lord and day of vindication by our God. This is how the Lord reveals himself to the
people. Our joy flows out of our
willingness to do the same for the people around us. We study how to be the good news of the Lord
and how to reveal his presence by our living his love in our day and age just
as he did back then. We rejoice in the
Lord because we know how to be his love to our world. We rejoice that we can follow the Lord more
closely and thus love him more dearly.
Action
We can pray without ceasing by living his
life in our day and age. Whether we eat
or drink or sleep, we can do all for the Lord.
In all circumstances, we can give thanks to the Lord because each moment
of our lives has the fullness of God’s love that we can share by giving out
liberty back to the Lord so that we can be used in all we do to be his love to
the world. His grace and his love is
enough for us. John was a voice crying
out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord. He could only point out
Christ. To us is given the possibility
to be the love of Christ to world since the Sacraments are how the humanness of
Christ remains in each one of us so that we can be his life to the Church.
No comments:
Post a Comment