Even?

Even though I sin He is still Holy

Even though I fall He is always there to pick me up

Even though I am weak, His strength is made perfect in my weakness

Even thought I am blind, He always guides me

Even though I neglect Him, He is always waiting for me to call

Even though I look for different medicines to heal me He is the True Physician

Even through all this He still loves me and never Forsakes me

Even though You do this for me Lord will I ever even love You in a fraction of the way You love me?

Jesus Is!

Jesus is the Word made Flesh. Jesus is the Bread of Life. Jesus is the Victim offered for our sins on the Cross. Jesus is the Sacrifice offered at the Holy Mass For the sins of the world and mine. Jesus is the Word – to be spoken. Jesus is the Truth – to be told. Jesus is the Way – to be walked. Jesus is the Light – to be lit. Jesus is the Life – to be lived. Jesus is the Love – to be loved. Jesus is the Joy – to be shared. Jesus is the Sacrifice – to be offered. Jesus is the Peace – to be given. Jesus is the Bread of Life – to be eaten. Jesus is the Hungry – to be fed. Jesus is the Thirsty – to be satiated. Jesus is the Naked – to be clothed. Jesus is the Homeless – to be taken in. Jesus is the Sick – to be healed. Jesus is the Lonely – to be loved. Jesus is the Unwanted – to be wanted. Jesus is the Leper – to wash his wounds. Jesus is the Beggar – to give him a smile. Jesus is the Drunkard – to listen to him. Jesus is the Retarded – to protect him. Jesus is the Little One – to embrace him. Jesus is the Blind – to lead him. Jesus is the Dumb – to speak for him. Jesus is the Crippled – to walk with him. Jesus is the Drug addict – to befriend him. Jesus is the Prostitute – to remove from danger and befriend. Jesus is the Prisoner – to be visited. Jesus is the Old – to be served. To me – Jesus is my God. Jesus is my Spouse. Jesus is my Life. Jesus is my only Love. Jesus is my All in All. Jesus is my Everything. Jesus, I love with my whole heart, with my whole being. I have given Him all, even my sings, and he has espoused me to Himself in tenderness and love. Now and for life I am the spouse of my Crucified Spouse. Amen.

—-Mother Teresa

Where are your tears?

Then one of the Pharisees asked Him to eat with him. And He went to the Pharisee’s house, and sat down to eat. And behold, a woman in the city who was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at the table in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster flask of fragrant oil, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping; and she began to wash His feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head; and she kissed His feet and anointed them with the fragrant oil. Now when the Pharisee who had invited Him saw this, he spoke to himself, saying, “This Man, if He were a prophet, would know who and what manner of woman this is who is touching Him, for she is a sinner.” And Jesus answered and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” So he said, “Teacher, say it.” “There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing with which to repay, he freely forgave them both. Tell Me, therefore, which of them will love him more?” Simon answered and said, “I suppose the one whom he forgave more.” And He said to him, “You have rightly judged.” Then He turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave Me no water for My feet, but she has washed My feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head. You gave Me no kiss, but this woman has not ceased to kiss My feet since the time I came in. You did not anoint My head with oil, but this woman has anointed My feet with fragrant oil. Therefore I say to you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much. But to whom little is forgiven, the same loves little.” Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.” And those who sat at the table with Him began to say to themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?” Then He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you. Go in peace.” Lk 7:36-50

Todays reading in the Coptic Lectionary sparked something in me that caused me to examine myself. We read the story of the woman who anointed the feet of the Lord with fragrant oil and with her tears. I imagined myself being this woman who everyone in town knew as a sinner. I imagined my sin and everyone in my neighborhood or church knowing it. I all of a sudden felt very exposed and I felt the burden of the sins that I have in my life. I thought to myself, would I be as bold as this woman walking into a room filled with “righteous people”? Would I be bold enough to go up to Christ and cry and anoint his feet? St Ambrose writes, “Show, then, your wound to the Physician that He may heal it. Though you show it not, He knows it, but waits to hear your voice. Do away your scars by tears. Thus did that woman in the Gospel, and wiped out the stench of her sin; thus did she wash away her fault, when washing the feet of Jesus with her tears”. We all should long to approach Christ just as this woman did, coming with tears and repentance. We should go to the Physician and tell Him our ailment and ask Him for a remedy for our sins. I know I have many ailments that I need Him to heal, will you go to Him with yours?

Love the Lord your God with all your heart!

Mark 12:28-34

²⁸ Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving^[a] that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”
²⁹ Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’^[b] This is the first commandment.^{[c] 31} And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’^[d] There is no other commandment greater than these.”
³² So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. ³³ And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul,^[e] and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
³⁴ Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”
But after that no one dared question Him.

So I was meditating on these verses early in the morning and I was wondering what kind of message the Lord was telling me. I found that the Lord was telling me a very important message that I have never noticed in this passage. So in the story a scribe comes up to the Lord and asks a very important question regarding how to live a righteous life for the Lord. He was seeking after living a life that was pleasing to the Lord. So the Lord responds to him with what we all know today as the” Golden Rule”. I will focus on the first part of the passage which is Love the Lord with all your heart. Your heart is the control system for your physical body it is the organ which pumps blood to all rest of your internal organs. Without the heart the body has no ability to function. I believe that the Lord is asking us here to love Him with our heart because He knows that this is the central part of our life and if the heart is given to anyone or anything but God than we are surly deviating from the plan that God has intended for us. I will give a biblical example of this when Solomon was instructed in I Kings 11 not to take on wives from other kingdoms.  The Lord clearly instructed him and told him that if you do, you will deviate from My will and you will forget about Me as your God. Solomon went on to take as many 700 wives and in doing so,  he forgot about the Lord and his heart was turned away from Him. He was so consumed in the worldly lusts that he forgot about the blessings and the gifts that the Lord had given him. Solomon went on to worship other gods and offer sacrifices to them, so the Lord became angry with Solomon because he had turned his heart away from Him. I worry sometimes that in our own lives we are consumed by the world and our heart is given to other things besides the Lord. But the Lord tells us that we must return our hearts to Him in order for our lives to be pleasing to Him because if I love the Lord with the organ that controls my life than I am loving him with the core of my existence. In the book of Joel we read this passage,   Now, therefore,” says the LORD, Turn to Me with all your heart, With fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.”  So rend your heart, and not your garments; Return to the LORD your God, For He is gracious and merciful, Slow to anger, and of great kindness;  And He relents from doing harm. Today is the day that the Lord wants our heart and wants us to figure out what is taking His place in our lives. He wants us to figure out what is hindering our relationship with Him. We all know the things that hinder our relationship with the Lord but He tells us to return to Him because with Him our lives will be great.

St Jerome writes on the comments on this passage saying, “If love is the essence of the commandment, that love is not an external behavior that we merely project, but, it rather represents a life that touches all our possibilities, touches our being, “love with all soul”; touches our emotions and inner feelings, “with all heart”; touches our thoughts, “with all mind”; and also touches our visible behavior, “with all strength’. It is as though, love involves the dedication of man, in his whole, by the Holy Spirit of God, in order to bear the nature of his creator within him; Through “God is love”(1 Jn. 4: 8), we bear His life, and His attributes, working within the soul, the heart, the mind, the body, and all energies and possibilities!” im him

On Sin

It is not the constant thought of their own sin, but the vision of the holiness of God that makes the saints aware of their own sinfulness.

-Archbishop Anthony Bloom on Living Prayer

The Lord is in Everything

When you sit to pray, you are sitting at the Right-hand of God the Father in Jesus Christ.

When you stand to pray, you are in the position of the resurrection with Christ our Lord.

When you kneel to pray, say the same words of our Lord in the garden and surrender daily to regain your peace the gift of God to us.

Enjoy sleeping as someone who is waiting to be raised by the Lord.

When getting dressed, pray that the Lord may take away the old life and give you the new one.

Give thanks for everything you eat and drink, for this is not in essence separated form the Holy Eucharist. If Christ is the food and the nourishment of your life then every meal will become a chance to pray to receive Him and to be nourished by Him waiting for the Meal that gave new meaning for every meal.

May your walking be always a renewal to commit your life to the Way of the One who is our only Mediator.

This does not mean, however, that for each of the above should be performed with particular words in fixed manners; nor does one fix a particular way of behavior because the sense of the presence of the Lord is the goal of prayer.

Our prayers and our behavior must be unified to adjust our life to our fellowship with the Lord.

+Abba Philemon

Silence is a Virtue?

 

I was on a retreat this past weekend and I was thinking about my walk with the Lord, I was struggling with the fact that recently I have been unable to hear His voice.   But as I was thinking about my recent struggles, I began to realize that I haven’t taken the time to be still and listen. Have I taken the time out to listen? That was the question I was struggling to answer this weekend.  I feel like this a recurring struggle that many Christians complain of. How come I can’t see God or hear His voice? Many times People in our culture find it very difficult to be silent, even for short periods of time. MP3 players, cell phones, radio, pod casts, TV, video games – the list goes on and on. We will do anything to avoid silence. T.S. Eliot said, “Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here,  there is not enough silence.” What is it about silence that makes us avoid it? I have come to realize that it is in the silence that God often speaks, the problem is we are unable to hear Him due to all the noise. I encourage you to spend the last two weeks of Lent being silent and allowing God to speak.  God often times speaks to us through His word but we are not willing to read it. I am going to try a new devotion of spending more time in silence because I tend to never stop talking. Our lives are like a jar of river water all shaken up. What we  need is stillness and silence so that the sediment can settle and the water can become clear.Maybe thats why I am struggling to hear Him. Father  Thomas Hopko prepared a list of 55 Maxims for Christian Living and number  9 on the list was to spend some time in silence every day.  http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/podup/hopko/lent_-_a_tithe_of_the_year

Ecclesiastes 3:7 
A time to tear, And a time to sew ;A time to keep silence, And a time to speak;

Psalm 16

¹ Preserve me, O God, for in You I put my trust.
 ² O my soul, you have said to the LORD,
         “You are my Lord, 
         My goodness is nothing apart from You.”

Do you really love Him?

If I were to ask many of you today, do you love Christ? Many of you would say of course I love Christ, he died for me. Honestly we often respond to this question without really thinking about the depth of our answers. What does is really mean when I say I love Christ? Is it a question that we boldly answer very often with an emphatic YES? If so, do we really take the time to contemplate on our answers? I’m going to pose a hypothetical situation that might relate to the question posed. Suppose a husband and wife are married and the husband spends time every day telling his wife how much he adores her, loves her, etc. The wife hears these words then expects the husband to live up to his words, right? Now once the husband leaves his wife’s presence, he cheats on her with another woman. He doesn’t ever take into account what he has done and doesn’t feel the slight bit remorseful and goes home to his wife and repeats all the nice things spoken to her that day. He is not aware of his words and what they mean; to him they are just words that he thinks will make his wife happy. The wife loves her husband so much and really thinks that the husband is faithful. However, I think we all agree that this guy doesn’t love his wife. He just tells her all the right things in order to make her happy. Now let’s pose another situation, say there is another couple who is married and the husband uses the same expressions to express his love to his wife. However, he is loyal, respectful, and sensitive to his wife and does everything possible to show his wife that he loves her. Now how does the wife know that her husband loves her? The wife knows he loves her by his actions and how he treats her. Which of the two do you think really loves his wife? From the two situations obviously its the one who is loyal and respectful. He doesn’t only rely on words but does his best to show his love for her by his actions. Now let’s get back to the original question, do you love Christ? If you answer yes, you should be prepared to show it. Understand guys that as a Christian, Christ has redeemed us and given us grace by His death on the cross. He has given us a free gift that none of us can earn or merit. His love for us is portrayed to us all over the Bible and most of all on the Cross. The only way we can truly reveal our love for Christ is by how we respond to his love. If I love Christ, just as the loyal husband then I show my love for Him by doing my best to please him. So how do I start really loving Christ? Well back to the relationship analogy, when a couple is courting they initially learn all about the other person. As the courtship continues, they begin to know the things that aggravate the other and cause arguments. As they begin to mature together they learn to slowly cut out the things that cause tension with their spouse. This is the same with our relationship with the Lord, when we start our spiritual lives we learn about him. As our relationship progresses we begin to slowly cut the sins out of our lives that hinder our relationship with Him because the love the He has for us becomes so consuming that it becomes natural to reciprocate. As stated in 1 John, “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us”, so His love is what teaches us how to love him in the first place. There will be struggles in our relationship but he will guide us through our shortcomings. Remember He is the good shepherd and if we really love him then we should know his voice and actively pursue it otherwise they are just words and we all know the old saying, talk is cheap.

I Love You O Lord

 This is a beautiful poem that H.H Pope Shenouda III wrote while in the hospital recently. I pray that our love for the Lord is unfailing just as His love is for us.

Pope says:
When I was in bed for long time(due to his illness), I decided to write poem better than the Dissipating thinking.
the poem name is “O’Lord I love you” talking about loving God in all situations and  under any circumstances.

O’Lord I love you in my retreat
While your chanting in my heart with deep words
O’Lord I love you in my trouble
In time of need and time of pain
O’Lord I love you in my repentance
In time of cry and time of regret

O’Lord I love you in times of prosperity
and also in times of lacking everything.
O’Lord I love you if a palace is being built for me
and also if this palace was fallen & destroyed
O’Lord I love you as a heart healing a wound
and happy when I found it healed
O’Lord I love you as a spirit fluttering around me
and granting me deep graces