Meditation

Aflame with the fire of love

Our God is a consuming fire. God appears as fire both to Abraham and Moses and Divine fire is repeatedly used in the Psalms. Also, we hear in the Gospel that the Holy Spirit came down upon the apostles like tongues of fire. Moses when he came down from the mountain his face was 'aglow with glory' so much so that the Israelites could not look at him and he had to wear a veil. So, how can we endure what the Israelites could not? Through the incarnation of Jesus Christ, in assuming our nature gave us the potential kept from us since Adam. In Christ we have effective access to behold the glory of Our Lord. We can look upon God in the measure that we have conformed to God's image. These are not results of our performance, they are marks of God's presence in our life, our being. We, creatures of dust, are asked to glow with uncreated light. Our task is to make our life a house in which God's glory can dwell. We must build a temple to our Lord within ourselves. We must make God the centre of our life and keep checking that the centre does not shift, in this way we can build our sanctuary around God's presence, the fire. By staying close to the fire, we will develop the properties of fire. Our heart will flare up. We will be resolute in dismissing temptations that distract us from His purpose. We will have confidence that God who loved us first, will teach us how to love.

Peter said: "In whatever way you are able to share in Christ's sufferings, rejoice!" So, even our small sufferings, which we encounter in life, we can offer to Christ's furnace of love. But remember it was his suffering that redeemed us, that overcame all sin and death. So, in our offerings, let us be wary of thinking, even implicitly, that others need to be redeemed while we contribute to redemption. In the painting below by Tintoretto, we see what a true reflection It is of how it was when Jesus died. People going about their normal day, gawkers, men bartering, Our Lords Mother swooning in a heap under his body, full of grief. You can sense the mess, noise, ugliness, cruelty of the event. Men sitting on horses watching as if this were some sort of entertainment. Yet for us and all these He died. To 'share in Christ's suffering' is not a rarefied spiritual experience, it is to be plunged into the reality of sin. Christ, became man, to bear this sin. For whatever way in which evil and sin impinge on our life, you can channel the darkness into the saving light that emanates from Jesus so that what His light shines on 'becomes light'. We need to assume our pains freely and bear it in His name. We rejoice because we have been given the grace to play a tiny share in the victory of goodness over evil. May we have the grace to follow in the path of Carlo Acutis and Chiara Badano.

Murmuring is a grievous sin harmful to everyone involved or impacted. When God's people murmur, they do so because their heart is not sufficiently focused upon the Lord. Various forms of the word murmur occur forty times in the word of God. Interestingly, the number forty throughout scripture is frequently connected to a time of testing or trial. Most of these occurrences reflect people who were displeased with something the Lord was responsible for doing. Their displeasure with the Lord caused them to voice their frustrations to others. Murmuring manifests itself outwardly, but at its root is a heart problem. It comes as no surprise that the medical community uses the term murmur to describe a heart problem. In Exodus, "the children of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai" they murmured because the water was bitter even though they had seen the Lord part the waters through Moses. Through Moses the water was made sweet to taste by Our Lord. A few days later they arrived at a place where there was an abundance of oasis and water, had they just waited they would have seen what the Lord had in store for them. Again, later they murmured because they had no meat again despite. Similarly in the Gospels we have instances of people murmuring against Jesus and the disciples. Such as when he went to eat with tax collectors, sinners, and prostitutes. All people who the Jews believed were to be shunned. Even some of his faithful murmured and walked away when Jesus said, "I am the bread of life come down from Heaven". Put yourself on guard against murmuring internally, do not envy others for what they have but give thanks for what you have, God will always give more to a grateful heart.