Since love is convey through signs: words and actions. Jesus became the sign of the Father’s love for us. It was hard for human beings to experience the visible sign of God’s love in a way that would convict us and convince us beyond a shadow of doubt that God loves us unconditionally. When someone says to you: I love you. You are not sure if this is just mere words or they are a genuine reflection of truth. Words along are not sufficient. We look for external signs or manifestation of that love.

Jesus on the cross becomes such a sign. Jn 15:13 “Greater love....” But that happened 2000 years ago. What about today? What tells us today that God loves us. Jesus left us the sacraments as signs of his eternal love manifested personally to us today, here and now. “Sacraments are outward signs, instituted by Christ, which gives grace.”

He communicates his real love through the sacraments, which are real signs of his love. To bring us into a share of his divine life, to free us from the alienation of original sin, to hold us in his creative hand and to say, you are my son or daughter, I love you with an everlasting love, he recreates us in the saving waters of baptism. We are reborn, no longer dead in sin, but reconciled and restored to our original beauty and goodness. He feeds us with his Body and Blood so that we may grow in his love. When we sin and are repentant, he forgives us and heals us in the core of being through the sacrament of reconciliation. As we grow as disciples, he commissions us as witnesses of his love through the anointing power of the Holy Spirit through confirmation.  When we are in need of physical healing, he shows his love by anointing us in the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. When we choose to celebrate the gift of married love with another, he sacramentalizes our committed, exclusive, perpetual love through his sign of love in the Sacrament of Marriage. When he calls some to be to offer the sacrifice of the Mass, to forgive sins and to proclaim the Gospel all in his name, he ordains and consecrates them for the sake of the  Kingdom of God.

In the words of CCC #1116 Sacraments are “powers that come forth” from the Body of Christ, which is ever-living and life-giving. They are actions of the Holy Spirit at work in His Body, the Church. they are “the masterworks of God” in the new and everlasting covenant. (To be continued)

Why did God create us in his image and likeness? Why did he create his goodness and beauty within us? Listen to Ephesians 1:4-6. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, as he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him. In love he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will,for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved."

But the sad thing is that even though God created us good and sees his love and life reflected in us, many of us come into awareness later on in life, not of our goodness but of our unworthiness. Somewhere we have the perception that we are not good, that we are not lovable, that we have to earn the love of others; that we are flawed. For some of us we are broken and wounded.


But God who is love, who is good, desired his original plan to be fulfilled. To show us how much he loves us and how love can transform us and enable us to see the truth of our self-worth, he chose to give us many signs of his love—the greatest of which is himself becoming one like us in all things but sin. (To be continued)

Twenty-Ninth Sunday Ordinary Gospel Reflections B

· The passage that precedes this in Mark’s Gospel is Jesus’ second prediction of his upcoming passion and death on the cross.

Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." He replied, "What do you wish (me) to do for you?" They answered him, "Grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left." 
· Does this sound like one up-manship to you? Does our prayer to Jesus sound similar at times? Are we more focus on ourselves than on Jesus and others at times?

Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" 
· Jesus reminds them of what he just said about his upcoming passion and death. In other words, can you drink of the cup of suffering I am about to experience? Are you willing to embrace the cross of suffering?
· Jesus offers each of us the same invitation: to join him in the mystery of his passion and death. How do we understand and respond to this invitation?

They said to him, "We can." Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared." 
· Jesus is predicting their future sharing in his suffering and death. James was beheaded and John was persecuted. We can’t avoid the cross. It is part of our journey to eternal life.

When the ten heard this, they became indignant at James and John. 
· Why do you think they were indignant? Was it because they were thinking of the same thing but were upset that James and John beat them in the asking?
· When was the last time we became indignant at the way others act, especially when it makes us look bad?

Jesus summoned them and said to them, "You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt. But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many." 
· What does having a servant’s heart mean to you?
· What kind of a servant are you in your family setting? In the Church? In the community?
· To what extent are you willing to give your life for the sake of others, not literally, but figuratively, by thinking of what is best for others rather than what is best for you? How easy or hard is this to do daily? What are the consequences?
· What needs to be rectified in our relationship with Jesus and the faith community, if we are going to embrace the cross in our own lives?
· What application in our daily life this week will we make from this reflection?

We are told in scripture that after each of the major elements of our created world came into existence by the word of God,  God looked upon everything he had made and  found it very good. What a powerful statement! God created man and woman in his own image and likeness and said it is good. But there was something else that was said to human creatures, not said to others by God. That is: I love you.

There is an adage that says: God doesn’t make junk. All that God creates is intrinsically good.  Because God plants within the core of our being his goodness, his image and likeness. Because God is good and God created us in his image and likeness, then we are good. Only goodness comes from goodness. It is not something we earn. It is a given, a free gift.

When you and I were created in that moment of love which brought us into existence, God said you are good.  Have you ever seen the faces of those who hold a new born child. Their faces are beaming with joy for they behold the sign of God’s blessings and goodness in the face of the child; they hold in their hands the gift of goodness, a reflection of God himself. Thing about this. (To be continued)

Every four years we experience the summer Olympics. We see athletes who have trained for years, who have disciplined their bodies ruthlessly,  given up comfort and other legitimate human pleasures, pushed themselves to the breaking point. Why? Each one hopes for the gold, even though they may have to settle for  at best  the silver or bronze. Each one hopes to make a name for himself/herself. Each one seeks the acclaim of the world.  But who remembers any of the winners from Helsinki, or Tokyo, or Mexico or Berlin?  Acclaim is short-lived, fame is fleeting, and material possessions fade.

If we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, if we neither stray to the right or the left, if we fall in love and grow in love with Jesus, then we too can exclaim with Paul: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Trial or distress, or persecutions, or hunger, or nakedness or danger, or the sword?...For I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present not the future, nor powers, neither height nor depth nor any other creature, will be able to separate us from the love of God that comes to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord" (Rom 8:35, 38-39).                 

In the words of Pope John Paul II: "Open the gates wide to Christ. Have confidence in him. Take the risk of following him. Obviously this demands that you should come out of yourselves, or your own way of reasoning, or your prudence. It demands that you leave behind your indifference, your self-sufficiency, those un-Christian habits that you have perhaps acquired. Yes; that demands renunciation, a conversion, which first of all you must want to want; want to pray for in your prayer, and want to put into practice. Let Christ be for you the way, the truth and the life. Let him be your salvation and your happiness. Let him make over the whole of your life so that with Him you can live it in all its dimensions. Let all your relationships, activities, feelings, thoughts, be integrated in Him, or, so to speak, "Christified". I wish that with Christ you may come to recognize God as the beginning and end of your existence." (John Paul II, (Parc des Princes, 1 June 1980)