SPIRITUAL LIVING
Prayer and Devotions
The New Joy of the Bridegroom
by Father Walter Schu, LC
Resolution: Live this day seeking to make those around you joyful.
January 21, 2008
Saint Agnes, virgin
Mark 2:18-22
The disciples of John and of the Pharisees were accustomed to fast. People came to him and objected, "Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?" Jesus answered them, "Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast on that day. No one sews a piece of unshrunken cloth on an old cloak. If he does, its fullness pulls away, the new from the old, and the tear gets worse. Likewise, no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the skins are ruined. Rather, new wine is poured into fresh wineskins."
Introductory Prayer: Jesus, what a joy and what a gift to have this time to be with you alone! I want to know you more deeply. I want to hope in you more firmly. I want to love you with greater constancy in my daily life. Only you can give me these gifts. Only you can make me a bold and joyful apostle of your Kingdom.
Petition: Lord, help me to experience that new joy that you bring to every person who follows you closely, willing to carry the cross along with you and even to be nailed to the cross.
1. The Joy of the Bridegroom The Old Testament prophets, especially Hosea and Isaiah, describe the relationship between Israel and Yahweh as a marriage covenant. Israel is the bride, often an unfaithful one, and Yahweh is the bridegroom. When Christ refers to himself as the bridegroom, he is appropriating a title that had been reserved to God alone. Clearly, then, Jesus is much more than an ordinary rabbi. What experience do we most associate with a bridegroom and the wedding feast? Joy! “Although it is true that the cross is never absent from an authentically Christian life, it is equally true that the God who meets us on that cross is the same God who created the heavens and the earth, the oceans and the mountains, laughter, sunlight, and every earthly delight” (John Bartunek, LC, The Better Part, p. 365). Christ came to bring us joy,a joy that would last into eternity.
2. Should Christians Fast? Christ says that when the bridegroom is taken away, then his disciples will fast. This is his first reference in the Gospel of Mark to his coming passion. Fasting is a way of sharing in Christ’s sufferings. Fasting, sacrifices, and acts of self-denial are also means to detach ourselves from earthly goods in order to cling more firmly to Christ himself. They make us aware of how much we need God. But these ways of sharing Christ’s cross should not make us glum followers. “Some Christians give the impression that following Christ is a somber affair, or that the Christian life consists above all of dour sacrifices and boring obligations. Joyless, dreary, dull. No wonder their friends want to stay as far away from Christianity as possible! . . . If our friendship with Christ does not fill us with contagious enthusiasm, we’re probably being a half-hearted friend” (John Bartunek, LC, The Better Part, p. 365).
3. “Behold, I Make All Things New.” The movie The Passion of the Christ puts this phrase from Revelation on Christ’s lips when he meets his mother Mary as he carries the cross to Calvary. Christ’s “narrow gate” of the cross leads to a radically new way of life. It brings an abundance of joy, a new vigor, interior peace. The new wine of the life of grace that Christ pours out on his followers must change not only their way of life, but even their internal attitudes and consciousness. Saint Teresa of Avila has been credit as having said: “A sad saint is a bad saint.” What are the obstacles in my life that I need to overcome in order to follow Christ with greater joy and to radiate that joy to others?
Conversation with Christ: Thank you, Lord, for the new life you came to bring — your own divine life of grace inside me and each of your followers who is faithful to you. Help me to share that joy with others. I long to be a true apostle of your joy.
Resolution: I will live this day forgetting about myself and seeking only to help make those around me joyful.
5 comments:
Birds of a feather
Please explain????
Thanks for asking
Mormons ,catholics,Witness,Scientology,etc
All poured from the same bottle of power hungry control freaks,which are put to good use by governments everywhere to help keep citizens under control.
Such as below
A thought to consider...!
Date: November 04, 2004 20:44
About every other day or so we receive one of those "Send-this-to-all-your-friends" e-mails or one of those smarmy little anecdotal stories that's so amazing in its irony or its sense of the coincidentia that it makes the hair on the back of your neck stand on end in appreciation of the fact that the Cosmos really is in Good Hands after all, ad naus. Whenever we get one of these little things, we browse over to our friends at the Urban Legends Reference Pages (Snopes.com) and see what they have to say about it. If there are any reasons whatsoever for thinking that a particular mass-mailed tall-tale is anything other than simple urban legend or Christian propaganda, the folks at Snopes will provide us with more than ample reason to believe that we've stumbled on to an exception in this respect.
Here's what we came up with this time:
Snopes.com
Urban Legends
Reference Pages
Malice of Absence
Claim: While a student, Albert Einstein humiliated an atheist professor by using the "Evil is the absence of God" argument on him.
Status: False.
Unfortunately, the only adversarial e-mails that we find to be true tend to be those directly contesting something that we've posted, something that we ourselves failed to thoroughly research. Of course: sometimes you've just got to trust that your sources are competent or you won't get anything done. Besides, our sources have been right on the money, most of the time.
Again, most of the unsolicited little tales sent to us for the purpose of humiliating or converting atheists have turned out to be utter hawgwarsh, as my relatives and associates in the Deep South like to say.
Why is this?
Why do such a large number of religionists appear to be so eager to recruit or humiliate atheists that they use sheer falsehood in their sales pitches for religion?
Furthermore, why would an atheist (or anybody, for that matter) want to join (or even endorse) a group of dishonest people who would practice or encourage such behavior?
Continuing with this religion stupidity is leading to the next world war.
And the winner(or whatever)will be the one with the strongest ignorance,and the most people,who are already in planning stage, and it ain't us and it ain't far away.
There will be no one saying,as the British said,"YOU CAN KEEP YOUR OWN RELIGION".They will be saying ,DIG YOUR GRAVE.
And anybody who does any reading at all ,knows they have a point.
So here you have it,liberals and christians,showing you the way!
Senator under investigation
Tue, January 22, 2008
By CP
TORONTO -- Liberal Senator Mobina Jaffer is under investigation by the Law Society of British Columbia for allegedly overbilling one of her legal clients, CBC's The National reports.
CBC says Jaffer allegedly overcharged a Roman Catholic missionary order known as the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.
Brad Daisley, a spokesperson for the law society, confirmed an investigation is underway.
The Oblates fired Jaffer and her son, Azool Jaffer-Jeraj, three years ago after receiving bills of $6.7 million.
They had hired the Jaffers to defend them against dozens of claims of abuse in residential schools.
The Oblates sued the Jaffers, alleging they billed for more hours than there are in the day.
The Jaffers settled the lawsuit out of court last month; however, the law society says the case still requires an investigation.
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