Third Sunday of Advent

 Yesterday was the Third Sunday of Advent, called Gaudete Sunday, which means joy or gladness for the imminent return of Christ. On this day, priests wear pink, which represent this joy in Jesus. The priest tells us that we must distance ourselves from everything that takes away this joy in Jesus, such as worldly pleasures that are only fleeting, money, sex, fame, drugs, and anything else that robs us of this joy. Instead, let us rejoice in Christ!

Be Happy

 

One can be happy in pain.

I know it's possible.

We must leave our hearts open.

And let Divine love

Live there.

We have to open the door 

To hope.

Knowing that God exists

And that in Jesus,

You find everything  That your heart longs for.

Well, there is no pain

That is not comforted

If you approach

Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

And it is in the Eucharist

Where you already enjoy the fullness

Of the heavens.

And so within your pain

You will understand:

That  you are loved 

With sublime love.

I sense You

 

Yes, I sense You

In the murmur

From the voice of the wind

In the aroma

From the flower that opens

In the beam of light

Even in the rain

You are present

In the smile

From the one who is next to me

In the homily

From Sunday at mass

And in my life

You are always present .

The Divine Motherhood of the Virgin Mary

  

In Eastern traditions, the Virgin Mary is known in Greek as "Theotokus," which literally translates to "Mother of God." Yesterday, I read an explanation on EWTN about this. It explains that any mother's motherhood encompasses our entire being; that is, even though we are both body and soul, we don't have one mother for our body and another for our soul. Similarly, Mary, having given birth to the Son of God, who is both true God and true man, Jesus, is the mother of his entire being, and consequently, she is the Mother of God.

Here is a translation of the explanation given by James Cardinal Gibbons, Archbishop of Baltimore from 1877 to 1921. It was published by EWTN in English in an email message about a novena that I received (this is a version translated back from the translation in Spanish and may differ from the original):

When we call the Blessed Virgin Mary the Mother of God, we affirm our belief in two things: First, that her Son, Jesus Christ, is truly man; otherwise, she would not be a mother. Second, that He is truly God; otherwise, she would not be the Mother of God.



In other words, we affirm that the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Word of God, who in His divine nature is eternally begotten of the Father and consubstantial with Him, was begotten again in the fullness of time by being born of the Virgin, thus taking upon Himself, from her womb, a human nature of the same substance as His own.


But it can be said that the Blessed Virgin Mary is not the Mother of the Divinity. She had no part, and could not have had any part, in the generation of the Word of God, because that generation is eternal; her motherhood is temporal. He is her Creator; she is His creature. Make of her, if you will, the Mother of the man Jesus or even of the human nature of the Son of God, but not the Mother of God.


I will answer this objection by posing a question. Did the mother who bore us have any part in the production of our soul? Was this noblest part of our being not the work of God alone? Yet, who would for a moment dream of saying "the mother of my body" and not "my mother"?


The comparison teaches us that the terms father and son, mother and child, refer to persons and not to the parts or elements of which persons are composed. Therefore, no one says, "the mother of my body," "the mother of my soul"; but in every respect, "my mother," the mother of me who lives and breathes, thinks and acts, one in my personality, even though uniting in her a soul created directly by God and a material body derived directly from the maternal womb.

Likewise, insofar as the sublime mystery of the Incarnation can be reflected in the natural order, the Blessed Virgin, under the shadow of the Holy Spirit, communicating to the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, as mothers do, a true human nature of the same substance as her own, is therefore truly and genuinely His Mother. It is in this sense that the title of Mother of God, denied by Nestorius, was reclaimed for her by the General Council of Ephesus in 431; in this sense, and in no other, has the Church called her by that title.

The Blessed Virgin Mary and Jesus

 

God is love. From the beginning of time, He had a plan for humanity, a plan for our salvation. And in that love, God thought of Mary, the Virgin Mother, Mother of God and our Mother, and of course, of salvation through Jesus, our Lord. We cannot speak of Mary without thinking of Jesus. Already in Genesis, God gives us hope when He says to the serpent in Genesis 3:15, “        I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head.”   This new woman is the Virgin Mary, and her offspring is Jesus.   Thus, God promises us a new mother and a savior, a new Eve and a new Adam.   And just as through Eve's disobedience we find death, it is through Mary's obedience that God gives us the hope of eternal life through Jesus.  For without the Virgin Mary's "yes," the life of Jesus would not have been possible.   And it is this Jesus who brings life to humanity, new life through grace.   Therefore, the Virgin Mary occupies a very important place in God's plan of salvation.   I recently heard on an EWTN program that the Virgin Mary can be compared to the Ark of the Covenant, because just as the Ark of the Covenant represented God's presence among the people of Israel, the Virgin Mary is the ark, the virginal womb that carried within her God the Son, Emmanuel, God with us.   Isaiah 7:14 tells us, “ Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign:   The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Emmanuel.”  This young woman could be none other than the Virgin Mary,  the Most Holy and Chaste Virgin before, during, and after childbirth.   This is a dogma of faith, but this ark that carried within her God the Son, this Mother of God, could not be stained by sin; therefore, she is a Virgin and was conceived without original sin.   I don't remember the saint's name because I heard it several years ago, but this is what he said about the Virgin Mary's virginity: "God willed it, He could, and He did it."   The God of creation willed to create the Virgin Mary to be the Mother of Jesus, and He chose her  from the beginning.   The mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus is undoubtedly the greatest miracle of all time.   Through Mary, the prophecies are fulfilled, and God Himself is present in our lives through Jesus, God the Son, who shows us His humility and His love and dwells among us.

Saint John the Baptist

You leaped for joy in the womb

Feeling Jesus near you

In the Immaculate Womb of Mary

To whom she is received with humility.

Saint John the Baptist, for you baptized

And you announced that He would come soon

You said not to baptize with water:

The Holy Spirit would descend.

And Jesus asked you to baptize Him,

You refused, you felt unworthy

But Jesus told you it was right.

And the prophecy was fulfilled.

The Holy Spirit was a dove

That confirmed it was who you came for

And you heard a voice from heaven

That confirmed what you already knew.

The Lamb of God, that's what you call him

The one you were paving the way for.

Once baptized, He began His journey:

By proclaiming God's good news.

It was your zeal for God for which you lived

You didn't care about the danger you were in.

And you died for denouncing what

That the eyes of God did not consent.

And so you gave your life for Him.

And on a silver platter, your head

Announced that the last prophet

Suffered martyrdom for love of his faith.

That faith which accepts everything for God,

On the value of giving one's life for God,

Of humility, of respect, and of prowess that

Asks for repentance, and God delivers.

May God confirm us in His faith and may we accept

Jesus, Man and God in our lives,

And let us not hesitate to tell the world

Jesus is life lived through love.  

The song of a little bird (January 8, 2023)

 

I confess that my favorite animals are birds. Especially the little birds that sing among the trees. They sing to their creator, I know. But they remind me of God for another reason. I feel that God speaks to us in different ways: in the scriptures, in nature, in a child's smile, in the wise voice of an elder, in the eyes of someone who has no roof to shelter them from the cold, the heat, and the rain, and also in the song of a little bird. The little birds remind me of God because I can hear them and yet I cannot see them. They hide among the branches of the trees, concealed from my view, like God. Except for winter mornings. I just went out to have a coffee in my backyard and I could hear their song. However, because the trees were bare, they were exposed to my eyes. And I thought that's how life is sometimes. God tries to speak to us, to make Himself present in our lives, but through the leafy canopy of our life's tree, we cannot see Him and we pass Him by, ignoring His call. However, it is in our winter days that we can clearly see the Lord, that we feel Him closer, that we pay closer attention, as when we face a difficulty, an illness, a problem. It is then that we realize that God has always been by our side, perhaps hidden by our own spiritual blindness. Yes, I love the leafy trees of summer and spring, but the leafless trees have reminded me how, during my own illness, God revealed Himself to me in a book, in a Bible, in a journal, in some drawings. But thank God my illness is behind me; I only hope that I never lose sight of Him. As a popular song says: "You can see Him if you look at the one next to you; you can feel Him deep within your heart."