April 17 Monday:
George Foreman, former heavyweight champion of the world, had been attending Bible classes and was in a prayer group. But he was still dragging his feet spiritually.
One night after a fight he sat down in his dressing room and put his head in his hands. Suddenly he noticed the blood from a cut on his head flowing over his hands and dripping down onto his bare feet. Then it hit him. These were the wounds of Jesus: head, feet, and hands. That night Foreman experienced spiritual birth. He turned his life over to Jesus so totally that his handlers sent him to the hospital for head X rays, thinking he had a head injury and needed help.
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Have we given ourselves over to Christ, or are we holding something back? "Jesus Christ will be Lord of all, or he will not be Lord at all." St. Augustine
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Nicodemus, the sincere but cautious intellectual, comes to Jesus at night. He is afraid to show openly that he follows Christ. The apostles and the Christian community are persecuted. They are afraid too, but they pray for courage. The Spirit makes them bold in proclaiming Christ and in being signs of Christ’s presence in his community. Christians are people who are to be reborn in Christ, reborn in the Spirit. Hence, they are people who should remain eternally young. Is our faith timid or bold? Do we dare stand up for the Gospel and live our faith openly?
The time and the style of the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus give the whole passage an air of mystery. The mysterious has only been intensified by the deep content of the conversation, which was above the understanding of the learned teacher of the law. He came to Jesus with the question every Jew would ask: What must I do to be saved?
Jesus did not let him formulate the sentence. Nicodemus was a wealthy man, a member of the highest religious council, the Sanhedrin. Jesus gave him the answer: to be saved, man must be born from above. This not the earthly birth but a divine, new mode of existence. By birth received our nature. By this rebirth we are made able to see God. This new existence is God's gift. We receive it from above through the water and the Holy Spirit, through the sacraments. Nicodemus knew of baptism from John at the Jordan. But here it is not only a washing but a purification. The streams of water are the Holy Spirit poured out on man. He has to accept this in faith. Grace gives us a new origin and a new nature.
April 18 Tuesday:
The context: Today’s Gospel is the continuation of the visit of Nicodemus with Jesus. Nicodemus was a rich Jewish rabbi and one of the seventy members of Sanhedrin. He wanted to clarify whether the obeying of the Mosaic Law and the offering of prescribed sacrifices were enough for one’s eternal salvation. But Jesus used the occasion as a teachable moment, showing Nicodemus the necessity for a spiritual rebirth through the action of the Holy Spirit by means of the water of Baptism as an essential condition for one’s salvation.
Jesus teaches Nicodemus the effects the Holy Spirit produces in the souls of the baptized. We know the presence, force, and direction of wind by its effects. It is so with the Holy Spirit, the Divine “Breath” (pneuma), given us in Baptism. In Hebrew and Aramaic, the scholars tell us, the same word pneuma means “spirit,” “breath,” and “wind.” We do not know how the Holy Spirit comes to penetrate one’s heart. But He makes His presence felt by the change in the conduct of one who receives Him. Jesus further explains that he himself comes from Heaven, and, hence, his teaching is credible. Then, by comparing how God saved the snake-bitten Israelites through the symbol of bronze serpent, Jesus tells Nicodemus that “the Son of Man” is going to save mankind by death on the cross.
Life message: We need to adjust our lives, recognizing and making full use of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives: 1) We need to begin every day by asking for His Divine strength and guidance and end every day by asking His pardon and forgiveness for our sins.
2) We need, as well, to pray for His daily anointing and for His gifts, fruits, and charisms so that we may live as children of God.
3) We also need to throw open the shutters and let the Spirit enter the narrow caves in which we bury ourselves. Fr. Tony((https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
April 19 Wednesday:
The context: Jesus explained God’s plan of salvation to Nicodemus by declaring that the story of Moses and the brazen serpent was a sign pointing to the Good News that God would show His love for mankind by subjecting His own Son to suffering and death in order to save them all: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). This is the summary of the Gospel message of salvation through Christ Jesus. This is the Good News in the Gospels.
Today’s Gospel passage teaches us that our salvation is the free gift of a merciful God, given to us through Jesus, His Son. It explains that Jesus, the Son of God, became the agent of God’s salvation, not just for one sinful nation, but for the sinfulness of the whole world. Through Jn 3:16, the Gospel teaches us that God has expressed His love, mercy, and compassion for us by giving His only Son for our Salvation. This tells us that the initiative in all Salvation is God’s love for man. St. Augustine of Hippo describes a dream message received by his mother, Monica, who prayed and wept unceasingly, fearing Augustine would be damned because of the life he was leading. This message convinced her that she had to live with him, not cut him off as she had been doing, for God still loved him even in his present condition. Augustine’s example also explains to us the universality of the love of God. God’s motive is Love and God’s objective is Salvation. Those who actually receive eternal life must believe in the Son and express that love in deeds.
Life message: 1) We need to respond to God’s love for us by loving and serving Him in others in whom He dwells. God’s love for us is unconditional, universal, forgiving, and merciful. Let us make an earnest attempt to include these qualities in sharing our love with others during this Easter season. “In the evening of life you will be examined in love,” said St. John of the Cross [Dichos, 64, note 595, CCC 1022; Sayings of Light and Love, #57 in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodrigues, OCD Institute of Carmelite Studies, (Washington, DC: ICS Publications, 1979, p,672).] — What he means by “love” is love expressed in deeds. Fr. Tony((https://frtonyshomilies.com/)L/22
April 20 Thursday
The context: In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus explains his Divinity to Nicodemus and his relationship with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. It is Jesus’ Divinity which gives authority and veracity to his teachings and credibility to his promise of eternal life for his followers.
Jesus’ claims: 1) Jesus claims that, as Son of God, he “comes from Heaven.” Hence, he can speak of God and Heaven from his own experience, just as the native of a town can speak authoritatively about his town. That also means his teachings are reliable. 2) While the Jews believed that prophets were given only a small share in God’s Spirit, Jesus, as God’s only Son, shares the fullness of God’s Spirit and, hence, his teachings and promises are always reliable. 3) He gives eternal life to his followers. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God rests upon him” (Jn 3:36).
Life messages: 1) We need to seek the daily guidance and strengthening of the Holy Spirit living within us because it is He Who reveals Divine truths to us and Who gives us a better and clearer understanding of Scriptural truths taught by the Church. 2) Since our destiny depends on our own free daily choices, we need to choose Christ and his teachings and stand for Christ’s ideas and ideals. 3) We need to choose Jesus in order to choose Life. Before his death, Moses challenged Israel: “See I have set before you this day life and good, death and evil…. Therefore, choose life that you may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice, and cleaving to him” (Dt 30:15-20). Joshua repeated the challenge in Jos 24:14-15. We face that challenge every day. Fr. Tony((https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
April 21 Friday:
The context: Today’s Gospel describes one occasion when Jesus tried in vain to withdraw from the crowds at Capernaum. He traveled by boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to a remote village called Bethsaida Julius, where there was a small grassy plain. But when Jesus stepped ashore, He was faced with a large crowd of people. This was the scene of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand as described in today’s Gospel. This is the only miracle, other than the Resurrection, that is told in all four Gospels, a fact that speaks of its importance to the early Church. Today’s Gospel passage invites us to become humble instruments in God’s hands by sharing our blessings with our brothers and sisters. We may regard the incident in which Jesus multiplied loaves and fish in order to feed his hungry listeners, both as a miracle of Divine Providence and as a Messianic sign. The lesson for every Christian is that, no matter how impossible one’s assignment may seem, with Divine help it can be done, “For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Lk 1:37). Jesus used as his starting point for the miraculous meal a young boy’s generous gift of all the food he had, perhaps to remind us that love is the prime requirement for salvation, and selfishness blocks the life-giving action of the grace of God in us. The early Christian community especially cherished this story because they saw this event as anticipating the Eucharist.
Life message: 1) As Christians we need to commit ourselves to share all we have and are, and to work with God in communicating His compassion to all. God is a caring Father, but He wants our co-operation. That’s what the early Christians did, generously sharing what they had with the needy. 2) We, and others in our time, need to ask for the courage to share, even when we think we have nothing to offer. Whatever we offer through Jesus will have a life-giving effect in those who receive it. 3) We are shown two attitudes in the Gospel story: that of Philip and that of Andrew (Jn 6:7-9). Philip said, in effect: “The situation is hopeless; nothing can be done.” But Andrew’s attitude was: “I’ll see what I can do; and I will trust Jesus to do the rest.” We need to have Andrew’s attitude. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
April 22 Saturday:
The context: The event presented by today’s Gospel is the scene immediately following Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand with five small loaves of bread and two fish. Sensing the danger of having the people make him leader of a revolt, Jesus promptly instructed the apostles to leave the place by boat and went by himself to the mountain to pray after dispersing the crowd.
A double miracle in the sea: When the apostles in the boat were three to four miles away from the shore, they faced an unexpected storm, caused by the hot wind of the desert rushing into the Sea of Galilee through the gaps in the Golan Heights. Recognizing the danger, Jesus went to the boat, walking on the stormy sea. Jesus calmed the frightened disciples as he approached the boat, and as soon as he got into the boat it “reached land they were heading for.”
Life messages: 1) We need to approach Jesus with strong Faith in his ability and availability to calm the storms in our lives and in the life of the Church. Church history shows us how Jesus saved his Church from the storms of persecution in the first three centuries, from the storms of heresies in the 5th and 6th centuries, from the storms of moral degradation and the Protestant reformation movement in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the storms of sex abuse scandals of the clergy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. 2) We need to ask Jesus to protect us when we face storms of strong temptations, storms of doubts about our religious beliefs, and storms of fear, anxiety, and worries in our personal lives. 3) Experiencing Jesus’ presence in our lives, we need to confess our Faith in him and call out for his help and protection. (https://frtonyshomilies.com/)
