Tag: <span>Intercession</span>

March 18, 2021March 1, 2021

Be Moses

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In the gospel, to counter the unbelief of His enemies, Jesus cites Moses as His witness–for, He says, “Moses wrote about me.”

Jesus is the Son of the Living God, Himself divine. John the Baptist witnessed to Him, His own miraculous works witnessed to Him. And, reaching forward through the centuries, Moses witnessed to Him.

It is interesting that this Gospel passage falls together with today’s first reading, where we see Moses interceding before a God who is ready to punish His grossly ungrateful and idolatrous people.

Moses intercedes for the great body of the descendants of Abraham, reduced to base adorers of a metal calf, and wins God’s mercy for them.

And thus it is that he points to Jesus Christ. That same Jesus who cites Moses as His witness is the very embodiment of the mercy of God for which Moses interceded.

Consider, for a moment: What if we become nothing other than new Moses, interceding before God’s fallen people, and winning the grace of the Incarnate Word for them? What if we in this way become nothing other than extenders of the impact of His infinitely powerful saving act? We could do worse.

If we look to the great saints, like St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. John Vianney, we can ultimately distill their lives down to this: They won extra doses of Jesus’ saving grace for souls, through their self-offering and intercession. In this way, they were like new Moses.

If we use our entire lives merely to intercede for sinners through prayer and self-offering with Christ in the Eucharist, we are not wasting them.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to send you His Spirit and craft you into the intercessory powerhouse He wants you to be–one that, through prayer and sacrifice, will bring soul after soul, person after person to the grace of Jesus Christ.

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January 9, 2021January 1, 2021

The Spectrum

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

John the Baptist bears witness to Jesus, not only as the Messiah of Israel, but also the one whose presence is the source of joy and happiness, He who is personal fulfillment–in fact, his own personal fulfillment. And He does it in today’s Gospel passage, in one of most beautiful testaments to Jesus in the entire Gospel: “The one who has the bride is the bridegroom; the best man, who stands and listens for him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. So this joy of mine has been made complete. He must increase; I must decrease.”

For the Baptist, Jesus is not just the object of his special mission. He is the source of John’s personal joy.

John the Baptist is a beautiful example of what John the Evangelist speaks of in today’s first reading: “We know that anyone begotten by God does not sin; but the one begotten by God he protects, and the Evil One cannot touch him.”

The joy that John the Baptist derives from Jesus, and his focus on Him as his reason for being, makes it much more unlikely for the Baptist to offend God by breaking the Commandments than, for example, a mediocre Christian whose focus is on worldly self-gratification and whose attitude toward the Commandments is bare-minimum compliance.

In the first reading, John the Evangelist bears unequivocal evidence to the doctrine of two tiers of sin–those which are deadly, and which remove the life of God from the soul, and those which are still sin but are not deadly. For those we observe committing latter sort, John encourages us to pray, that God may infuse His life into them.

When John says he is not encouraging prayer for such an infusion for those we observe committing deadly sins, he is simply observing that God is being chased out of that person’s life and therefore–due to His respect for human freedom–He has no “foothold” from which to infuse an increase of His life within the soul. Now, John is not discouraging us from praying for the conversion of sinners who have committed grave sins and are spiritually dead. But when we pray for such persons, we are, as it were, begging God to knock (and knock hard) at the door of their hearts, and ask for admission–we are not asking to infuse life from the position of one already dwelling within their hearts.

When we read through today’s first reading and through today’s gospel, we observe a dramatic spectrum of souls in relationship to God: Everything from those who have ousted God from their lives, and who can only receive an infusion of His life again if they accept His solicitations of readmission, to souls like John the Baptist, who live habitually from Christ as a source of happiness, and could not imagine seeking happiness anywhere else.

Where lie we on this spectrum?

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to infuse you with His life; ask Him to make Himself more and more your sole focus in your quest for happiness. Ask Him to infuse His life likewise into your loved ones who are living the Christian life. And regarding those–your loved ones and others–who have effectively dismissed Him from their lives, beg Him with all the zeal of which you are capable to continue knocking at the door of their hearts, trusting that when He does so, His offering is always compelling in its attraction.

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December 8, 2020November 21, 2020

The Power of the Immaculate

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

The choice of the first reading for a day like today is something of a snub to evil: The entire first reading describes that which Mary completely avoided at the Immaculate Conception, like a halfback who makes a run free and clear around a defensive end entirely faked out by a reverse play.

Free and clear. By the retroactive action of the redemptive act of her Son, Mary never tasted the downward pull of the sinful inclinations the rest of us experience due to the taint of original sin.

There is something awesome that flows directly from the Immaculate Conception, and likewise flows from her constant (albeit simple) “yes” as described in today’s gospel.

That thing is her power. The thoroughness of the gift of her freedom to God throughout her life is a gift that makes up for a great deal of bad choices and weak freedom in many others. The gift of her freedom, the unmitigated “yes” of a free creature, stands in and gives God “permission” to invade humanity with His grace–first, literally embodied in the Son she bore, but then also in the form of invasions of grace throughout history, some of which we glimpse through her own appearances at various moments. Christ did not come to overturn our free will, which Adam and Eve used definitively to reject God on behalf of all humanity. Rather, He came to open the door to allow each of us to choose for ourselves. He allows for us to choose salvation.

Typically, however, He refrains from nudging or pushing us through that door. But it is the free gift of self of creatures like Our Lady, and those who seek to emulate her in this, her “team” as it were, together with intercessory prayer, that permits Him within His own scheme of justice to give those nudges, to give those pushes.

Thus, Mary is not merely the model for Christians of virtue. She is the Christian hero par excellence, who very literally and concretely furthers Jesus’ work of salvation.

And there is absolutely no reason why, today, we cannot attain a full sharing of her power in amplifying the effect of Jesus’ infinite saving grace, by giving ourselves to God in absolute trust, as she did.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Recall how in the Old Testament, Elisha was bold enough to ask for a double portion of the spirit of Elijah–the greatest prophet who had ever lived. Be bold. Ask Christ to shape you to be like His mother. Ask Him to bring you to wield the very same power for good, through gift of self, that she wields.

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