Monthly Archives: June 2017

WELCOMING OR KENOSIS & EXALTATION

Two themes for reflection

“Welcoming” is a theme linking today’s 1^st Reading and the Gospel.  A Shunamite woman and her elderly husband welcomes Elisha and they agree to provide him hospitality and a small room.  Their basic gesture of hospitality offered simply out of respect for a man of God and with no thought for a reward, resulted in a ‘divine reward’:  she miraculously conceived and bore a son.

So too, according to the Gospel, even the simple gesture of offering a cup of cold water to ‘one of these little ones’ will not go unnoticed:  that person will be rewarded.

What about Kenosis (self-emptying) and Exaltation?

1. Despite her lowliness, humiliation and emptiness, (for she was without a son), the Shunamite woman continued to be generous and hospitable and for that God rewarded (exalted) her.
2. Paul reminds us that in baptism we ‘die to self’ but then God raises us to live a new life (- after death there is the resurrection for those with faith).
3. In the Gospel, Jesus instructs us to be ready to take up our cross and follow in his footsteps, adding that ‘anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it’.

So, in those moments of sadness, tragedy, loneliness, betrayal, depression and emptiness, turn to the Lord in prayer, and he will pick us up – he will raise us!

Whichever theme speaks to you, stay with it and then prayerfully re-read all of today’s readings including the Psalm.

Fr Philip Sainter

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TWELFTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME

Which command from God is repeated most often in the Bible?  Is it “Thou shalt not commit adultery” or, perhaps, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God with all thy heart….”?  No!  It’s the command we find in verses 26, 28 and 31 in today’s Gospel reading:  DO NOT BE AFRAID. 

1. Jesus gives three reasons why his apostles, and we, should not be frightened or afraid: As his disciples, committed to following him, Jesus will support us and affirm us in our mission. God always exposes peoples’ evil plans and deeds. So, do not be afraid!
2. Our opponents have limited power. They can hurt and upset us, they can even kill the body, which is going to die in any event, but they cannot kill the soul.  Have faith!  Do not be afraid!
3. God is compassionate towards us: He loves and cares for each one of us. We are more important to God than sparrows. So, do not be afraid!

Blessed Antonio Rosmini wrote in his Third Maxim of Christian Perfection:

“The Christian should remain perfectly tranquil as to all that is divinely ordained, in regard to ourselves, or even to the Church of Jesus Christ; and, in labouring for the Church, to follow the indications of the Divine Will.

Jesus Christ has power over all things in heaven and on earth … the Christian therefore should feel perfectly tranquil and full of joy, resting entirely upon Our Lord … and should banish from his heart all uneasiness, and every kind of anxiety and solicitude …” (Maxims, nos. 1,2&3).  Perhaps you may wish to sing hymn 964:

“Be not afraid, I go before you always”

Fr Philip Sainter

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CORPUS CHRISTI

I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.  Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever;  and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.

In all truth I tell you,  if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise that person up on the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in that person. As the living Father sent me and I draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will also draw life from me.  This is the bread which has come down from heaven;  it is not like the bread our ancestors ate: they are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever. (John 6:51.53-58)

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THE MOST HOLY TRINITY

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

After the Easter Season which culminated in the Feast of Pentecost, the liturgy provides for these three Solemnities of the Lord: today, Trinity Sunday; next Thursday, Corpus Christi which in many countries … will be celebrated next Sunday; and finally, on the following Friday, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Each one of these liturgical events highlights a perspective by which the whole mystery of the Christian faith is embraced: and that is, respectively the reality of the Triune God, the Sacrament of the Eucharist and the divine and human centre of the Person of Christ. These are truly aspects of the one mystery of salvation which, in a certain sense, sum up the whole itinerary of the revelation of Jesus, from his Incarnation to his death and Resurrection and, finally, to his Ascension and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Today we contemplate the Most Holy Trinity as Jesus introduced us to it. He revealed to us that God is love “not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance” (Preface). He is the Creator and merciful Father; he is the Only-Begotten Son, eternal Wisdom incarnate, who died and rose for us; he is the Holy Spirit who moves all things, cosmos and history, toward their final, full recapitulation. Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He does not live in splendid solitude but rather, is an inexhaustible source of life that is ceaselessly given and communicated …

… “In him we live and move and have our being”, St Paul said at the Areopagus of Athens (Acts 17: 28). The strongest proof that we are made in the image of the Trinity is this: love alone makes us happy because we live in a relationship, and we live to love and to be loved. Borrowing an analogy from biology, we could say that imprinted upon his “genome”, the human being bears a profound mark of the Trinity, of God as Love.

BENEDICT XVI, ANGELUS, Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity, Saint Peter’s Square, Sunday, 7 June 2009

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VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them  the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created.  And You shall renew the face of the earth.

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