Reflection on the Gospel of the Feast of St Patrick by Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

 

HENCEFORTH YOU WILL BE CATCHING MEN

image from: Life's like a Bowl of Stamps: Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(Luke 5:1-11)

Today we celebrate the feast of St Patrick. We are celebrating St Patrick as the second Patron of Nigeria based on the fact that he was the one who brought the faith to Ireland, a land that in turn produced the missionaries that evangelized many people and brought the Good News down to Nigeria.

This feast has been a great feast in Nigeria. It is a public holiday for our Catholic Students. It is worth it. We use this feast to appreciate God for all that the Irish missionaries came here with including education, healthcare, development, civilization, freedom etc.

They really became catchers and fishers of men for Christ. Today's Gospel invites us to respond as the apostles responded and as the Irish missionaries inspired by St Patrick did to the call to catch men for God. It is a clarion call on each and everyone of us with regard to whether we have accepted and made the Gospel of Christ our own. We are challenged to grab the time. It is time for Africa to start going out to re-evangelize our evangelizers. It is high time we began to live convinced Christian lifestyles that will draw people to God and draw God to the people. It is indeed time we started allowing our Christian religious tenets to influence our decisions in government, business, education, health matters, human relationship etc.

This feast gives us an opportunity to keep an eye on the scripture, on the person of Christ, on the apostles and on St Patrick to ask ourselves as a local Church if we are making enough effort to bring people to God, if we are even well drawn to Christ, if we are ready and willing to touch people positively with our words, with our actions and with our gifts. Let's rely on the grace of God and follow His directions to achieve these. We can, if on Him alone we depend.

LET US PRAY

Thank You Oh God for the gift of St Patrick. Help us to emulate His holy zeal for the salvation of souls and start winning souls for Your kingdom where with   You we shall live and reign for ever and ever. Amen

God bless your Day.

Happy Feast of St Patrick.

St Patrick, Pray for us.

Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

Reflection on the Gospel of Tuesday Week 4 of Lent by Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

 

DO YOU WANT TO BE WELL?

Image from:Что значит "блаженны нищие духом"? (fb.ru)

(John 5:1-16)

This is a question Jesus asked the paralytic man in today's gospel reading.  He's been in this situation for thirty-eight years. He's been there giving reasons for not being healed. He's been there missing opportunities of recovery. He's been there enjoying being called sick. He has stopped making efforts to get well. He has stopped expecting any way out of his condition. He no longer knows what he wants. Anything goes for him now. He has become helpless. He has condemned himself to be totally dependent on the forces around him. He has objectified himself. He is now docile to evil and manipulations.

This man was not just sick. But he was in sin. He was not just physically paralyzed but spiritually crippled too. He can't go far in the spirit world. He can't rise on the wings of prayer. He doesn't channel his prayers aright. He looks around for any and every one that comes to receive whatever he has to offer. Anything now goes for him. He has lost his sense of moral judgment. He is down to the lowest level. His state is now a very pitiable one. Jesus intervenes: Do you want to be healed?

This is our problem, this is the problem of our society, this is the problem with the Church and our world at large.  Jesus asks us all this question today. Do we really want to get well? Have we not started seeing our paralysis as something to be enjoyed?

Do we want to get well when we have our pet sins, those sins we are not ready to leave, those sins we still plan to go back to shortly after confessions? Do we have any plans of getting well when we allow our human elements to override divine will in the Church? Do we have the intention of getting well when we put before us the love for money, reaping without sowing, stealing mandates, accepting and giving bribes, favouritism in our activities?

How can Nigeria do well when the people with sincere intentions and progressive mindset are eliminated? How can we rise when insecurity is high, and nothing serious is being done to stop the kidnappings, intimidations and killings even when the powers that be know what to do to end it all?

Do we really want to be healed? This matters a lot to Christ. If we want it, we will have it. Christ has already granted it. He has paid for our peace and wholeness. When you're ready to leave that bad habit, that sinful relationship, that evil clique Jesus heals you. But not without a warning. As Christ heals you through His word this season and in the Sacrament of reconciliation, hear what He says to you Nwa Chukwu:  "See, you are well, sin more, that nothing worse befall you."

LET US PRAY

Lord Jesus Christ, we are tired of looking for help here and there, allowing sin to take the better part of us and lying flat on the soil of corruption and depravity. Heal us by the power of your word and sacraments oh Lord. Loving Father, give us the willpower to desire total healing from you and to say goodbye finally to sin. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

God bless your Tuesday (4th Week of Lent)

Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

Reflection on the Gospel of Monday Week 4 of Lent by Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

GO; HAVE FAITH IN GOD

Image from: breadoflifevoice.com

(John 4:43-54)

The miracle in Today's Gospel Reading took place in Galilee, the city of the first miracle of Jesus. Just as in the first miracle of Jesus, Mary instructed the disciples: 'whatever He asks you to do, do it'. Jesus today in a similar way, commands the man who came to Him begging Him to come and heal his son in the following words: "Go; your son will live". The man believed, went home and discovered that his son was healed at that hour Jesus released the assurance.

Most of the time we find it difficult to go where the Lord leads. We lack the trust to believe that God will do as He has promised. We go more by sight and not by faith. But today the Lord is telling us the importance of faith in our Christian journey. A Christian without faith, trust and dependence on God will certainly not record success in the heavenly sojourn. "Go" means a lot. Go into holiness, go into goodness, go and experience the wonders of the Lord, go and receive what God has prepared for you, go and don't look back, go and don't get discouraged, go and don't be afraid, go into life. Go away from faithlessness, go away from frustration, go away from weakness in prayers. Just go away from the vices and evils, go away from dead works.

Dear Child of God, is your faith still alive? Come to Jesus with it, no matter how small it is, your encounter with Him in the word, the sacraments and the teachings of the Church will, for sure, increase your faith. This official came with the faith of 'seeing is believing' but went home with 'believing without seeing'. What are the things you are expecting from God, but you have not yet seen? Keep believing in God you will come to know his power, the power of his resurrection and glory.

He says: Your son will live. Hear Jesus telling you all that you will live once again in your life. Your hope will be restored. Your marriage will live, your children will live, your family will live. Will our country still live? We pray and believe; nothing is impossible with God. Africa will live.

Let us go home, go on, continue living like the children of God that we are. Then, God will make every dead good thing around us to come back to life according to His will.

LET US PRAY

Heavenly Father, we want to live, we want our family and friends as well as our enemies to live according to Your will. Life outside of You is death. Speak Your word and bring us to life in Christ Your Son who lives and reigns together with the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen

God bless your Monday (4th Week of Lent)

Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

Homily of 4th Sunday of Lent Year B by Fr. Isaac Chima

 

Rejoice, God loves us

(Image from: Fourth Sunday of Lent AND St. Joseph, Husband of Mary (jesusismyredpill.com)

1^st Reading: 2Chro. 36:14-16,19-23

2^nd Reading: Eph. 2:4-10

Gospel: Jn 3:14-21

Dear brothers and sisters, the fourth Sunday of Lent is called Laetare Sunday. “Laetare” is a Latin word, the singular imperative of laetari: "to rejoice". On this Sunday, the church invites us to rejoice. This call to rejoice is seen in the opening antiphon of today’s liturgy, drawn from the Prophet Isaiah 60:10-11. It says: “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who are mourning, exult and be satisfied.”  

The reason why we are invited to rejoice is because of what God has done for us in Christ. Saint Paul captured this in the second reading of today. He said: “He made us alive together with Christ, He saved us by grace, and raised us up with Him, and made us to sit in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Friends, through the death of Jesus, God gave us life. Hence, the church wants us to be joyful in anticipation of the great Paschal events that won salvation for us. The Paschal events are the demonstration of the love of God for us. So, we are to rejoice because God loves us. The Gospel and the second reading of this Sunday hinted on this love of God for us.

In the Gospel of today, Jesus told Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son.” For the sake of humanity, God offered his only Son to be sacrificed. Dear friends, this is the highest form of love. Our God is love indeed, and His love for humanity is constant, generous, and self-sacrificing. The unique feature or nature of this love of God towards humanity is that it is simply heroic. It is a gratuitous love, an unmerited love, we actually did nothing to deserve it. It is unlike the love of human beings that usually rests on the qualities of the object of love.

The second reading of today gave a beautiful illustration of the unmerited love of God for humanity. It said: “God is rich in mercy, out of great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead though our sins, He made us alive together with Christ.” Dear friends, the love of God searches for us to give us life and blessings even when we have merited death and condemnation by our sins. The love of God refuses to see us as failures even when we have been written off and condemned by fellow human beings. The love of God keeps sustaining us in a world that is full of sorrow, pain and hate. The love of God always fills us with the hope of survival in this world of uncertainty.

Dear friends, to whom much is given, much is also expected. Love is not a one-way movement. For love to grow and bear fruit, it must be reciprocated, it must be appreciated. Hence, if God loves us this much, what should be our response? Having shown love to his disciples, Jesus said to them: “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Thus, the way to reciprocate the love of God is by loving our fellow human beings and by loving God also. Any form of oppression, hate, unnecessary anger, wickedness, injustice, lack of charity shown towards fellow beings is a betrayal of the love we receive from God. Any form of impurity, lack of faith, disrespect of holy things is against the love we should show God.

Jesus also expects us to reciprocate this love of God by loving the light and hating the works of darkness. But, unfortunately, we often spend our time loving the things of darkness and running away from the demands of the light of God. In the Gospel of today, Jesus said that the light has come into the world, but men loved darkness rather than the light. Are you among those who love the work of darkness and hate the light of God? Are you among those who support evil and clamp down on those who do good? Are you among those who condemn the voice of truth and praise those who lie? Are you among those who praise immoral standard as a model and, then, refer to holiness of life as unfashionable and non-progressive? Let us not love darkness; let us not hate God’s light, because there is a consequence for the betrayal of the love of God.

The first reading showed us how the people of Israel betrayed the gratuitous love of God for them by living sinful lives, by desecrating the holy places of worship, by despising the word of God and mocking the prophets, and by loving darkness instead of light. God punished them after a long run of patience. He allowed them to be conquered by their enemies and taken into slavery for many years in Babylon. Our God is a patient God, but He is also a God of Justice. He loves, He also punishes.

In fact, a good knowledge of the history of the people of Israel would show us that the Israelites were stripped of everything that made them a nation (the Temple, their King and their Land). And they were taken back empty handed to the land (Ur in Babylon) from which God called their ancestor, Abraham (Gen. 11:31). It was a return to square one. Non-repentance, arrogance in doing evil and betrayal of God’s love can reduce us to nothing, pulling us down from grace to grass.

The time of Lent offers us an ocean of God’s mercy, let us embrace it. This time, the church presents before us the greatest act of love - the death of Christ on the cross. Let us appreciate it by saying no to sin and by renewing our heart through the sacrament of reconciliation. We are also invited to appreciate this ultimate act of love by sacrificing our time, resources, and talents for the good of our neighbours and the entire society.

Fr. Isaac Chinemerem Chima

PUSC, Roma

Reflection on the Gospel of 4th Sunday of Lent Yr B by Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

 

REJOICE, THERE'S LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

(LAETARE SUNDAY)

(Image from: View Mass Online | St. Cecilia Parish (saintceciliachurch.org)

(John 3:14-21)

The message of today is a message of hope to all those who have been doing the Lenten observances with all their hearts. Your effort is not in vain. Your sacrifices are not wasted. Your fasting is not a meaningless hunger strike. Your charity is not taken for granted. The war you are waging against the devil, the world and your flesh is not a lost battle. Victory is on the way. Don't be tired. Be sustained by the hope of what is coming. Rejoice, it is well.

On the fourth Sunday of Lent, the Holy Mother Church calls her children through the entrance antiphon from Isaiah 66:10-11 to rejoice. The Psalm reads:  Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning; exult and be satisfied at her consoling breast.

If we remember very well, since the Ash Wednesday, the whole Church was invited to put on sackcloth, to come and mourn, to contemplate the sorrows of Christ. Since that day, the musical instruments were kept out and highly moderated in the Catholic Church. Every festive aura left the Church or got minimized. Flowers were put away and violet became the only colour on the altar. All these remind us constantly of the need to remain in the mood of mourning.  But today rose is allowed. Some decorations are permitted. Musical instruments may be played. Is it Easter yet? Oh no! The Church is a Church of hope. The Church wants us to imagine what lies ahead. The Church wants us to savour the joy of what is to come. The Church invites us not to see the sufferings we are passing through as ordinary but to see the salvific character in them. Yes, the Church encourages us to move on. God wants us to make the joy of the Lord our strength as we strive for perfection this Holy season. Thus, today's joy is for all who look up for the glory that follows sorrows.

 

WHY YOU MUST REJOICE

The Gospel of today presents us with reasons why we must not give up in our struggle. We may seem to be losing hope. It may look like we are not making any headways. But we really want to be better. We sincerely desire to grow spiritually and otherwise. We truly wish to succeed and to be saved. The word of God in today's gospel reading has the answer.

 

GOD LOVES YOU

God so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son. If God loves you who can be against you? What is that force making you believe it is over? Who is discouraging you with the false message that you will not reach your destiny? You may have made efforts and failed; the love of God beckons you to keep going.

The temptations you wish to overcome may have knocked you down once or twice, and you feel like crying, you feel like dying, you're in the big shit of your life, you look at yourself as messed, you imagine the devil smiling and rejoicing over you. Beloved in Christ, Jesus loves you. He puts on you the new turban of grace to go on. Confess and continue. Rejoice in the Lord. The enemy will not laugh last unless you give him permission to. He can't take away the love of God for you. Be focused and ride on to your victory. Your loving Father awaits to embrace you and kiss you too.

 

YOU WILL NOT PERISH

We are called to rejoice keeping in mind that the crosses of our life will not overwhelm us. We are encouraged to pick our broken selves up and follow Christ. Don't despair. The load and weight of the problems you bear will not crush you. You're following a saviour who wins at the end. Many trials may come your way, but victory is yours in Christ who strengthens you. So, do not allow these to be an excuse for you not to rejoice in heaven. Just smile and tell yourself, these too will pass away. I will survive, I will conquer, I will overcome! I will never perish.

 

YOU BEAR THE LIGHT OF CHRIST

Love the light and walk in the light of God's ways. Christ the light has come into the world. But, unfortunately, men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.

Evil is the only thing that destroys the joy of the Lord in us. There is no joy in darkness. There's no reason to rejoice in the dark. Darkness symbolises everything fearful, atrocious, corrupt, depraved.

Are you still living in the dark?  Why not purify your soul with the word of God, with constant confession, with the Holy Communion and other spiritual provisions of the Church.

What are those things you are still hiding from Christ? Why are you hiding from the Lord? Open yourself to Christ. Open your weak points to Him. Show Him the areas that have not received His illumination in your life.

Receive the joy that comes from His glory. Shun the false joy that comes from dirty wealth, impure relationships, extortions, marginalisation, bad governance, manipulations, and malpractices. These do not give lasting joy. You can only rejoice when you are seeing light in the light of Christ.

LET US PRAY

Thank You Jesus for giving us reasons to rejoice in the midst of the turbulences and roaring of the seas. Thank You for cheering us up amidst the temptations and trials we face. Let your light shine steadily in our lives to dispel the darkness of sin, sorrows, and all evils. Bless your word of hope in our lives and feel us with the Easter joy that is on the way through Christ our Lord. Amen

Happy Laetare Sunday (4th Sunday of Lent, Yr B)

Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

Reflection on the Gospel of Saturday Week 3 of Lent by Rev Fr Julian Ekeh

 

HUMILITY

(Luke 18:9-14)

The Gospel reading of today tells us the story of two persons who went into the temple to pray. One prayed to himself, the other prayed to God in humility asking for divine mercy.

Jesus wants us to develop the attitude of coming to God with humility and opening ourselves in sincerity to Him. Humility helps us to tell ourselves the truth about ourselves. Humility enables us to look up to God for mercy. Humility helps us to come to God with reverential fear. Humility helps us to strike our hearts and say, "I am sorry Lord". Humility opens our eyes to our faults making us not to canonize ourselves, not to make ourselves saints but to acknowledge the fact that we are sinners.

Let us make our encounter and meeting with the Lord a fruitful one. Let us make our prayers answered ones. Let us make our Lenten observance like that of the man whose prayer was answered. Let us remove every Pharisaic tendency in us making us to claim we are better than we are. Let us rely on God to declare us free, let us call on God to exalt us. Christ blesses those who practice humility in the beatitudes that they will inherit the earth. May you inherit the blessings you pray for in humility from here.

May we not go away after this season worse than we were before. May we be sanctified by the prayers and penance of this Holy season so as to rejoice in the glorified Lord whose blood sets us free. May we not lean on our merit or achievements but on the grace of God who brings down the proud and raises the lowly.

LET US PRAY

In humility and fear we come before you this day pouring out our unworthiness and sinfulness. We are helpless O Lord without You. Come to our aid. Come and bless us, come and heal us. We do not deserve any favour from You because of our weakness. Oh God, we rely on your strength to make us strong in the face of the many challenges staring at us. Help us not to stop depending on You all the days of our life through Christ our Lord. Amen

God bless Your Saturday (3rd Week of Lent)

Rev Fr Julian Ekeh

Reflection on the Gospel of Friday Week 3 of Lent by Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh

 

HOW CLOSE ARE YOU TO THE KINGDOM OF GOD?

(Image from: Love God And Neighbour | ultra106.5fm (ultra106five.com))

(Mark 12:28b-34)

The season of Lent is a period when God invites us through the Church to draw nearer to the kingdom of God. At this time, we are encouraged to put away all that keep us far from God.

The Gospel of today tells us all we have to do in order to draw close to the kingdom. The sum of it all is to love God and to love our fellow men.

When we love God, we will not displease Him. We will make out time to worship Him. We will think of how He will feel before we do whatever we want to do. When we love our fellow men, we will not destroy them. We will not cause them harm. We will share what we have with them. We will put smile on their faces. 

This will be the certificate we present on the last day. The love we show during our days on earth will open the heavenly gates for us. Let us continue to love. Let us not stop giving even our little. A lot is involved in loving. You may not have money to give, give peace, show concern, visit, feel with the other, give advice, give protection, give truth. Just show God how much you love Him by loving your brothers and sisters. This is the greatest law of God.

Dearest in Christ, love God, love man, then happiness is yours for ever. You will never be far from the kingdom of God. Make peace with that your neighbour. How far or close you are to him determines how far or close you are to God. Closeup the unnecessary gaps created by hate, indifference, jealousy, anger, envy etc.

LET US PRAY

Oh God, thank You for Your Love that made You to send Your only begotten Son whose suffering for love we remember this time. We are sorry for going far from Your expectations on us. May we love You and our fellow human beings with all our hearts through Christ our Lord. Amen

God bless your Friday (3rd Week of Lent)

Rev Fr Julian O Ekeh