“She took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” —Genesis 3:6

When we sin, we become alienated from the Lord and others. In sin, we become spiritually blinded, confused, enslaved, and insensitive. By sin, we hurt the other members of Christ’s body, the Church. These are only a few of the countless effects of one sin. Nevertheless, although we all are familiar with these bad effects of sin, we can hardly fathom the enormity of the first sin, that is, the sin that changed the origin of our species and gave us a fallen nature. The effects of our sins are not genetically inherited by our children and their children, etc. However, the effect of Adam and Eve’s sin was genetically inherited by humanity. This boggles the mind and is the root of every evil on earth.
The original sin and our subsequent fallen nature can only be dealt with by our being begotten from above, born again (see Jn 3:3), created anew (see Gal 6:15). Jesus made this possible by His death and resurrection. We accept this new birth by being baptized (see Jn 3:5), and we live the resulting new life by faith.
The purpose of Lent is to help us live the new life of baptism by deepening our faith. After Lent, at every Easter Sunday Mass, in every Catholic Church in the world, the Church will call us to renew our baptismal promises. This is one of the greatest possible expressions of faith, and is the heart of God’s plan of salvation.
Give alms, pray, fast, repent, go to Confession, prepare to renew your baptismal promises.

Prayer: Father, may I “grasp and live the immense, extraordinary richness and responsibility” of my baptism (Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People, Pope John Paul II, 61).
Promise: “Not on bread alone is man to live but on every utterance that comes from the mouth of God.” —Mt 4:4
Praise: Glory and praise to You, risen Lord Jesus Christ!

March 9, 2014 by dgcree

Jesus Christ prays for us and in us and is the object of our prayers

From a commentary on the psalms
by Saint Augustine, bishop
[ 354 – 430 A.D. ]

God could give no greater gift to men than to make his Word, through whom he created all things, their head and to join them to him as his members, so that the Word might be both Son of God and son of man, one God with the Father, and one man with all men. The result is that when we speak with God in prayer we do not separate the Son from him, and when the body of the Son prays it does not separate its head from itself: it is the one Saviour of his body, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us and in us and is himself the object of our prayers.
He prays for us as our priest, he prays in us as our head, he is the object of our prayers as our God.
Let us then recognise both our voice in his, and his voice in ours. When something is said, especially in prophecy, about the Lord Jesus Christ that seems to belong to a condition of lowliness unworthy of God, we must not hesitate to ascribe this condition to one who did not hesitate to unite himself with us. Every creature is his servant, for it was through him that every creature came to be.
We contemplate his glory and divinity when we listen to these words: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. Here we gaze on the divinity of the Son of God, something supremely great and surpassing all the greatness of his creatures. Yet in other parts of Scripture we hear him as one sighing, praying, giving praise and thanks.
We hesitate to attribute these words to him because our minds are slow to come down to his humble level when we have just been contemplating him in his divinity. It is as though we were doing him an injustice in acknowledging in a man the words of one with whom we spoke when we prayed to God. We are usually at a loss and try to change the meaning. Yet our minds find nothing in Scripture that does not go back to him, nothing that will allow us to stray from him.
Our thoughts must then be awakened to keep their vigil of faith. We must realise that the one whom we were contemplating a short time before in his nature as God took to himself the nature of a servant; he was made in the likeness of men and found to be a man like others; he humbled himself by being obedient even to accepting death; as he hung on the cross he made the psalmist’s words his own: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
We pray to him as God, he prays for us as a servant. In the first case he is the Creator, in the second a creature. Himself unchanged, he took to himself our created nature in order to change it, and made us one man with himself, head and body. We pray then to him, through him, in him, and we speak along with him and he along with us.

March 9, 2014 by dgcree

The cross of Christ gives life to the human race

From a sermon by
Saint Ephrem, deacon
[ c.306 – 373 A.D. ]

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.
Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.
Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong-room and scattered all its treasure.
At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men.
He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up his cross above death’s all-consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognise the Lord whom no creature can resist.
We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.
Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.

March 9, 2014 by dgcree

FEEDER SYSTEM

“The reign of God is at hand!” —Matthew 10:7

In today’s Gospel, Jesus chose twelve new men, His apostles (Mt 10:2-4). He commissioned them, and us, to be new Josephs, to be absorbed in distributing the Word of the Lord in times of famine and in times of plenty. The children of the New Covenant are to be distributors of food like the Old Testament patriarch Joseph, who fed the whole world (see Gn 42:6).

From this point on in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus will be teaching and feeding His apostles. After building them up, He will send them out to feed His people with His Word (Jn 21:15-17). The apostles then feed others, who in turn grow strong enough to feed still others. God intends that this feeder system perpetuate itself so His Word continues to spread (see Acts 6:7).

We are to be the Master’s good stewards, occupied with distributing physical and spiritual food (Mt 24:45). Like the apostles, we have been fed by the Master on a steady diet of Word and Eucharist. Thus built up, we are able to feed His sheep (Jn 21:17) and keep them alive and thriving in times of famine (Ps 33:19).

Amos prophesied that there would be a famine not for food, but for hearing the Word of the Lord (Am 8:11). Therefore, distribute God’s Word, teaching in-season and out-of-season (2 Tm 4:2).

Prayer: “May Your kindness, O Lord, be upon us who have put our hope in You” (Ps 33:22).

Promise: “Break up for yourselves a new field, for it is time to seek the Lord.” —Hos 10:12

Praise: The 120 Chinese Martyrs, who included men, women, and children, priests, religious, and lay people, showed the depth of their faith by giving everything, including their lives, to Jesus.

March 9, 2014 by dgcree

The sending of the Holy Spirit

A treatise “Against the Heresies”
by St Irenaeus
[ 130 – 202 A.D. ]

When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God.
He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.
Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first-fruits of all the nations.
This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning.
If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.

March 9, 2014 by dgcree

One bishop with the presbyters and deacons

A letter to the Philadelphians by St Ignatius of Antioch

Ignatius, also called Theophorus, to the church of God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ located at Philadelphia in the province of Asia. You have found mercy and have been strengthened in the peace of God; you are now filled with gladness because of the passion of our Lord, and by his mercy you are made believers in his resurrection. I greet you in the blood of Jesus Christ. You are my abiding and unshakeable joy, especially if your members remain united with the bishop and with his presbyters and deacons, all appointed in accordance with the mind of Christ who by his own will has strengthened them in the firmness which the Spirit gives.
I know that this bishop has obtained his ministry, which serves the community, neither by his own efforts, nor from men nor even out of vainglory, but from the love of God the Father and of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am deeply impressed by his gentleness, and by his silence he is more effective than the empty talkers. He is in harmony with the commandments as is a lute with its strings. I call him blessed, then, for his sentiments toward God, since I know these to be virtuous and perfect, and for his stability and calm, in which he imitates the gentleness of the living God.
As sons of the light of truth, flee divisions and evil doctrines; where your shepherd is, follow him as his flock.
For all who belong to God and Jesus Christ are with the bishop; all who repent and return to the unity of the Church will also belong to God, that they may live according to Jesus Christ. Do not be deceived, my brothers. If anyone follows a schismatic, he will not obtain the inheritance of God’s kingdom; if anyone lives by an alien teaching, he does not assent to the passion of the Lord.
Be careful, therefore, to take part only in the one eucharist; for there is only one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup to unite us with his blood, one altar and one bishop with the presbyters and deacons, who are his fellow servants. Then, whatever you do, you will do according to God.
My brothers, I overflow with love for you and with a joyous heart I make you strong-although it is not so much I but Jesus Christ. Although imprisoned for his sake, I fear more because of my imperfection. But your prayers will perfect me in the eyes of God so that I might yet receive the inheritance promised me by the merciful God. I seek refuge in the person of Christ through the Gospels and I appeal to the true ministry of the Church through the apostles.