Reflection - 79

Mt.1: 23

"The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel which means “God with us”'.

We are going through the 25 days of the preparation of Christmas. Bethlehem the birth place of Jesus means the house of Bread. Now for us the house of bread is the tabernacle which can be called as the Bethlehem of the time.

This Gospel passage was prophesied by Isaiah to the king Ahas in order to believe and trust in God. Today these passages indeed prophesy for us to the holy Eucharist the continuation of Christ’s incarnation on earth. The Eucharist is giving us the joy of having Christmas in our everyday life. Thus the meaning of the word Emmanuel came to be true. It is also happening in our personal life that when we receive Jesus we become the ‘house of bread’ or the tabernacle which can be considered as the abiding presence that we come across in the Gospel of St. John, chapter 15: 4 - 5. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

There is a problem that we may fail to realize this reality everyday and every time.  The problem is because of our failure to understand this mystery by our faith or because of our effort to understand this mystery by our reason. Both are problematic that they may resist the experience and the realization of the Eucharistic incarnation of Jesus.

Dear friends in this meditation let us try to check our selves do I have the Jesus experience in our Holy Eucharist? If not what made it difficult?

As Jesus chose Bethlehem to be born he chose us to be his tabernacles. So let every people who come across may find Jesus in us through our life. And let us pray.  “Lord Jesus helps us to deepen our faith as we prepare for the commemoration of your incarnation. So that we may realize that we are the tabernacle that you dwell in and help us to have a life according to that status. Come Lord Jesus and be with us. Amen.

Bro. Abin Kunnappally

Reflection - 78

 For God so; loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.                           [John 3: 16]

Couple of days ago, I read a book. Which is shrunk me lot. So I would like to share it as a refection before you all.

     

Once up on a time some young sages were loudly saying master … master… please come fast. Suddenly the master came beside them. One of the sages said; Master you have a letter from the emperor Constantan’s palace. This says that you are selected as an abbot. But they never saw any change on the master’s face. After some time the master said to them, I can’t see any specialty in an emperor writing a letter to his one of his people. Here is the more influential and effective letter which is written with the love by God the father to His favorable people. Not merely He send His beloved son to convey the message of the letter to them. It is really wonderful.

“For God so; loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “                           [John 3: 16]

     

Here we can see the greatness of the word of God. Lets meditate on it, do we read Bible daily? Externally we just feel that it is a simple activity and not that necessary in my life. So we spent more time to read facebook messages, chatting, and so forth. Here is the turning point of starting problems and we become a man of world. Those worldly things can’t lead us to eternal life and there bliss. For example, when holy bible reading here how do we listen? We may or may not be distracted by some other things. We should careful about it.

      

Day after tomorrow we are going to enter into the month of December. As we know, twenty five days before the X’ mas we have the preparation for the birth of Jesus. Externally we prepare by making cribs, stars, conveying X’mas greetings to each other, and so on. Similarly how can we have an internal preparation for the coming of X’mas? We can have the internal preparations like fasting, extra prayers, sacrifices for the birthday gift of child Jesus. In this meditation let us meditate up on it, how is my mentality towards listening and reading the word of God? And also meditate, how can we give a birthday gift to child Jesus through the internal preparation?

Bro. Jijin