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Many of the things we’d like to know about Jesus’ life we don’t know, but remember, as Fr. Mike has told us, a Christian mystery is not “a case to be solved.” It’s a beauty to bathe in. The Catechism explains the three characteristics common to each of Christ’s mysteries: revelation, redemption, and recapitulation. Fr. Mike shows how we are to participate in the mysteries of Christ. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 512-521.
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In our Catechism reading today we learn how out of love, God has fully revealed himself by sending his Son, Jesus Christ who established God’s covenant forever. We also learn that the Son is the Father’s definitive Word, but this Word has not yet been made completely explicit. Fr. Mike explains how private revelations may not claim to add to the Faith and must not contradict the Faith. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 65-73.
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One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life. That’s opposed to God holding out for the pure, the spiritual, the right idea or the ideal anything. This is why Jesus turns religion on its head! That is why I say it is our experiences that transform us if we are willing to experience our experiences all the way through. But it is also why we have to go through these seemingly laborious and boring books of Kings, Chronicles, Leviticus, Numbers, and Revelation. Those books, documenting the life of real communities, of concrete, ordinary people, are telling us that “God comes to us disguised as our life” (a wonderful line I learned from my dear friend and colleague, Paula D’Arcy).
— from the book Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality by Richard Rohr, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
One day is much like another in the search for God. But from time to time there is a sudden, unexpected revelation, or shining forth of God. You’re startled that you realize God is everywhere, in everything and everyone. Call it insight, epiphany, baptism in the spirit, or any other name, it is the same experience: The God within you is revealed fleetingly, and all the rest of your days are changed permanently. Something happens that you did not merit and that you cannot explain or communicate. But it is more real than any communicable experience, and you cannot formulate it or capture it in words; for to do so would be to have some hold on God, who cannot be captured in a phrase or formula. Nor can you, by remembering it, recapture the experience. It is gift; it is grace. The spirit blows where it will.
— from the book Song of the Sparrow: New Poems and Meditations by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Scripture Reading: Revelation 9:3-12
The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. . . .Revelation 9:7
It can be tempting to skip over this section in Revelation. Its message is troublesome. The swarm of locusts rising up from the Abyss, grotesque in appearance and ruthlessly determined to torment as many people as they can, are creatures we would rather avoid.
I think this fifth-trumpet scene applies the same technique Jesus used in parts of his Sermon on the Mount. This is hyperbole—the use of exaggerated pictures that are not meant to be taken literally. Consider, for example, what Jesus says in Matthew 5:29-30 (NRSV): “If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out. . . . If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. . . .” One of my church-education students responded to this passage by saying, “Wow! Jesus asks a lot.”
She understood. She knew that Jesus was not saying we should literally harm ourselves, but she could see that he does call us to resist sin. The fifth-trumpet story says a lot about evil and the terrible pain it brings into people’s lives, and we need to resist it. With God’s protection we can do that, but we must see evil for what it is. What the Bible calls sin and evil is what we might define as “doing what I want, when I want.”
Sin may look and taste like candy. But God wants us to see sin’s real cavity-creating rot. Perhaps this truth is best brought home in the name of the driver-king who comes out of the Abyss. His name is Destroyer.
Who is your king?
Lord, deliver us each day from the evil one, the Destroyer. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
//ReFrame Ministries//
John realizes she is not just a tool, a means for God to become human. She is herself a feminine force in the cosmos of his visions, a complementarity whose presence will reveal itself more and more once Mary lies down with her forefathers and foremothers in death. She, like her son, will not die to die; she will die to live forever in the Trinity of Persons who chose her to bear Christ in time. She will merge with the Word and its eternal speaking. She will be God’s eternal choosing of male and female together, willed by the Father, embraced by God’s Spirit, birthing mother of the Son throughout eternity, revealing the humanity of God to humanity. She herself will appear again and again in time. In and out of eternity. She will be the new ark of the covenant, the eternal enfleshing of the Son of God.
— from the book Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary
by Murray Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
St. Julian/Juliana of Norwich (1342–1416) is a Benedictine nun who lived as a recluse in Norwich, England. Little is known of her life with certainty. At the age of 30 she was suddenly struck by a severe illness which almost took her life. During this illness she received a series of visions of Jesus Christ in sixteen separate revelations. When she recovered from her illness the visions stopped. Fifteen years later, Our Lord appeared to her to give her the meaning of her visions. St. Julian wrote her visions down in a book called Revelations of Divine Love, the earliest surviving book in the English language known to have been written by a woman. After these revelations she began to live a solitary life as an anchoress in a little cell built into the wall at the church of St. Julian in Norwich, not far from London. During her life the Church was in schism, and England was caught in a long war with France. The book contains a message of optimism based on the certainty of being loved by God and of being protected by his Providence. She received visitors to her cell and gave them guidance on the spiritual life, becoming a spiritual mother to many. St. Julian is an important medieval mystic whose response to the problem of evil is cited in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 13th.
//The Catholic Company//
Have you ever doubted the existence of Purgatory because you’ve been told it’s not in Scripture? Well, Purgatory is in the Bible, and here’s where to find it.
“How can Catholics believe in Purgatory? Is that even in the Bible?”
Like the word “Trinity,” the word “Purgatory” is not in the Bible. However, the Bible emphasizes that we need to be perfectly pure, without a single blemish, to enter God’s kingdom.
Revelation 21:27 states, “But nothing unclean shall enter Heaven.” In 1 Corinthians 3:15, St. Paul writes, “If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but as only through fire.”
According to Dr. Gerard Verschuuren in his book, Forty Anti-Catholic Lies, “For most of us, the transition from a life on earth to a life in Heaven would be… so shocking that we would need some extra preparation time, as nothing unclean can enter the presence of God.”
Indeed, Scripture supports the existence of Purgatory and the fact that we need to go to Purgatory before we enter Heaven.
“I am coming soon, bringing my reward with me, to repay all according to their deeds. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” – Revelation 22:12-13 NLT
Each of us has been given 24 hours a day. And God has given each person different gifts and resources as well as unique opportunities to use those gifts. Every day, we must make choices about how we spend our time and what we do with our resources.
Many people make decisions primarily based on what seems important at the moment. They’re not concerned about the future but about what feels best right now.
How easily we forget that even if we solved every problem today, we would face new challenges tomorrow. While no moment of pleasure lasts forever, our actions have eternal consequences.
The Bible urges us to realize that our lives are like a vapor, a blink of an eye. Yet many people focus on this vapor and forget that today’s choices will impact them throughout their lives and into eternity.
Yes, we are saved by grace alone through faith. But the Bible reminds us that the choices we make here and now will help determine how we spend eternity.
Jesus said that when He comes again, He will bring His reward with Him. What rewards will He bring for you? You can help determine your rewards based on your decisions and actions today. Stay faithful to Him. Keep sowing seeds into His kingdom from your time, talents, and treasures. Remember, you will reap what you sow – in this life and into eternity.
Father, give me Your perspective on my life. Help me to be faithful with the gifts You have given me. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Revelation 22