Fifth Tuesday of Easter

Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD, and let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might.

God asks all of us to be His friends. Think about that for a moment. Our Creator, our Redeemer, our Advocate wants to be our friend. He wants to know, love, and serve us as friends do. He wants us to be with Him as much as He is with us. He constantly builds our relationship up through grace and compassion. He does small and great things for us and our good just as a good friend would. It is only right and good that we respond in kind to Him and do what He calls us to do... to love Him and all His children as He loves us.

Are we living up to our calling to be friends of our Lord? How do we make God known to others? What can we do to become better prophets of the Word?

O Lord, make us into good and faithful friends to you and all your children.

Amen.

Fifth Friday of Easter

“I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.”

We are not slaves, but friends of Christ. What a wonderful thing it is to be friends with the Lord of All Good and no longer slaves to sin! Jesus words in the gospels are a constant reminder to us that he came to free and love us with his whole body, heart, soul, and divinity. He didn’t have to do this, he could have given us a thousand commandments, but instead he gives us just the one to love one another as he loves us. What a wondrous and boundless love it is! We can only hope to love a fraction as well as Jesus did in his life, but with God’s help we can move mountains with our faith and withstand trials and tribulations with our hope. And with love, all things are possible.

What sins are we enslaved to? How can we allow God to free us from them? How often do we thank Jesus for being a friend who is always with us?

O Lord, you have freed us from sin and raised us up as your friends.

Amen.

Third Monday of Lent

Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.

Sometimes our family and friends do not accept our faith. They know us better than most people and yet that knowledge clouds their opinion of us (and our opinion of them). They might see us trying to become better Christians and they don’t understand it. They know our sinfulness and they point it out to us in such a way to make us wonder if we’re fooling ourselves. They tell us: Why are you wasting your time on prayer? Why are you trying to be someone you’re not? Isn't there something else you’d rather be doing than going to Church? Not all of us have these people around, but for those of us who do, it is a constant struggle to keep living the Christian faith when family and friends don’t live it themselves. We should remember that we are not here on earth just for them. We are here to do God’s Will and sometimes that means leaving our native place in order to fulfill our mission to the world.

Who are the people (not necessarily family or friends) in our lives who challenge our faith? How do we handle having our beliefs challenged? Do we offer up our trials for the reparation of sins and the conversion of sinners?

O Lord, we do not seek to be accepted by anyone else, but you.

Amen.