Showing all posts in Biblical Meditations

My divine Friend does not come to dwell in me only when I have already put my inner house in impeccable order. On the contrary, if I ask Him to do so, He Himself helps me with that. He does not shrink from anything; He is ready to show me the dirty corners that I would not even be able to discover, and He Himself gets down to work, but always with charming kindness and great perseverance. He wants to remain forever in my soul and prepare it for eternity. There it will stand firm forever and can never be derailed again.

This is hard work for my Friend, and it would not be possible at all without our Saviour, who bore our guilt and nailed it to the Cross. How good it is that He is a divine Friend and never grows weary! I hope I do not make it too difficult for Him. How I would like to listen to Him and obey Him as the holy angels do! Read More

I want to tell you about my divine Friend, because He is so good to me that I really have to share about Him with you. It is not that I think that you do not know Him and that He is exclusively my Friend – of course not! But if I tell you about Him, perhaps you will know Him a little better. Indeed, the more we hear about Him and the more time we spend with Him, the better we will know Him.

We will never tire of being with Him and it will always be a joy to meet Him.

This my divine friend is very strong, but also reserved. He does not impose Himself, but He is always ready if we only call upon Him and ask Him to come. He does not hesitate.

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Now you have come, beloved Holy Spirit. This time you came in a violent wind (cf. Acts 2:2), not as you did with your friend Elijah (cf. 1 Kgs 19:11-13). Then it was more hidden, as you usually work in the souls of the people who let you in. But today it was different as the Holy Scripture reminds us. How wonderful and convincing was Your work! The apostles spoke and proclaimed in their own tongue, but everyone else understood them in their own language.

“At this sound (a sound as of a violent wind) they all assembled, and each one was bewildered to hear these men speaking his own language. They were amazed and astonished. ‘Surely,’ they said, ‘all these men speaking are Galileans? How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; people from Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya round Cyrene; residents of Rome- Jews and proselytes alike – Cretans and Arabs, we hear them preaching in our own language about the marvels of God.’” (Acts 2:6-11)

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“On the faithful, who adore
And confess you, evermore
In your sevenfold gift descend;

Give them virtue’s sure reward;
Give them your salvation, Lord;
Give them joys that never end.”

The faithful, the people of God… Who belongs to them? From the point of view of vocation, all human beings belong to the people of God, because He wants all to be saved (1 Tim 2:4). That is why He sent His own Son into the world to bring people home and make them His children.

But there is a crucial difference between those who accept this call and live by it and those who pass by the Lord’s invitation.

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“O most blessed Light divine,
May that light within us shine
And our inmost being fill!

Where you are not, we have naught,
Nothing good in deed or thought,
Nothing free from taint and ill.”

The Spirit of God penetrates deeply into our souls, that is, he wants to reach the very centre of our being and dwell there, together with the Father and the Son who abide in us, according to the words of Jesus (cf. Jn 14:23). Once established in our hearts, the Spirit of God will be able to mould us into the image of God, if we allow Him to do so. This is the great work of the Holy Spirit, once He has brought man to repentance and brought him back to loving obedience to God.

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“You, of comforters the best;
You, the soul’s most welcome guest;
Sweet refreshment here below;

 In our labor, rest most sweet;
Grateful coolness in the heat;
Solace in the midst of woe.”

 

The Holy Spirit is the Comforter whom the Lord has given us. The Apostle Paul tells us: “He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor 1:4).

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“Come, Father of the poor!
Come, source of all our store!
Come, within our bosoms shine”.

The term “poor” includes all of us, especially those who are aware of their own poverty.

In our spiritual life we learn that we are always in need. It is the Holy Spirit who teaches us how great God’s love is and how far we are from it.

However, this knowledge does not become a reason for us to sink into sadness or even despair. On the contrary, it is a reason to lean even more on God’s love, trusting that He will have mercy on our poverty. Then it will be God who will make us rich, for He Himself is our wealth.

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Having concluded our journey through the Acts of the Apostles, in which we have accompanied these tireless witnesses of the Gospel on their missionary journeys, with all their sufferings but also with their joy at the spread of the faith, we now wish to focus our attention on the Holy Spirit, in keeping with the liturgical season.

For it was He who guided the mission of the apostles, who had to wait for His coming before beginning their ministry among all peoples. With today’s meditation we enter into the imminent preparation for Pentecost.

As a guiding star for the following meditations, I turn to the Pentecost Sequence, which is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful prayers of the Church:

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Shortly after Paul was taken to Caesarea, the high priest Ananias came down with some elders and the lawyer Tertullus to bring their charges against him before the procurator Felix (Acts 24:1). However, Paul defended himself, and Felix found no grounds for condemning him, so he postponed the case (v. 22). So Paul remained in Caesarea for two years, under guard but with certain liberties. Felix’s successor, Porcius Festus, left Paul in prison to please the Jews (v. 27).

As soon as he took office, Festus had to face the accusations of the chief priests and the leaders of the Jews against Paul (Acts 25:1-2). They asked him to transfer him from Caesarea to Jerusalem, ‘planning an ambush to kill him on the way’ (v. 3). But Festus refused and replied that they should go down to Caesarea (vv. 4-5). When they arrived and presented their accusations, Festus asked Paul if he wanted to go up to Jerusalem to be tried there (v. 9), to which Paul replied:

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After the series of the last three meditations, in which we addressed the crisis of the Church’s mission in the light of the witness of the apostles, we will now turn to the last chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. We will do so with a slightly different outline than in the last few weeks, since the last chapters speak for themselves. I can only strongly recommend to everyone to take the time to read them in their entirety. They are very rich in the sense that they narrate the following missionary journeys of St. Paul and all that happened in them. However, in the following meditations I will limit myself to summarising the events, emphasising one or the other key point.

After leaving Athens, Paul spent a very fruitful time in Corinth (Acts 18). There he was comforted by the Lord through a vision, who told him not to be afraid and that no one could harm him (vv. 9-10). Paul stayed one year and six months in Corinth (v. 11).

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