St. Paul also mentions that we are not to present any of our members — any part of our bodies — to be used by sin as a weapon. Instead we are to present our whole selves and all of our parts to be used by God as weapons of righteousness. In the great contest between good and evil, St. Paul calls us to get on the right side — God’s side. But how do we become the instruments of righteousness to God?
When we look at the story of the Resurrection, the story begins with darkness, in a time of great fear, sorrow and despair. We find the disciples who followed Jesus and expecting Him to overthrow the Roman Empire, frightened of the darkness and covering behind closed doors of their homes, having their hopes crushed and destroyed. We find the people who proclaimed to follow Jesus to the ends of the world, frightened and alone, and rejecting Jesus amid their fears. This description is very similar to the situation of the world we are living in amid the pandemic of Covid-19.
O death, where is thy sting?
O Hades, where is thy victory?
Christ is risen, and you are overthrown!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns!
Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in a tomb!
In the name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the previous two sessions, we first understood a brief introduction about the Jesus Prayer and then we started understanding the four elements embedded within the Jesus Prayer. In the last post, we understood the first element – the cry for mercy….
“In Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh has been put off when you were circumcised by Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through your faith in the working of God, who…
Should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot discern between their right hand and their left-and much livestock? Jonah 4:11 Dear brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus What a blessed journey has this been for the last 2 days and coming to…
When we compare our life with the situation of Jonah, we are in the same darkness when we don’t have the light in our life, when we don’t know the true direction/purpose of our life or when we do are not aware of the incidents surrounding our life. But when we realize this situation, we too cry out in our plight to the Almighty God, to the Eternal Light to guide us in our steps.
Co-relating the life of Jesus and the story of Jonah, each Christian who has been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity is called for the same mission which Jesus showed during His life on earth, to be a person of God’s own possession and to show His light to the dark world.
In the life of the baptized people, there is a constant rediscovering, re-enacting of the Father’s embrace of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. The baptized person is not only in the middle of the human suffering and muddle but also in the middle of the love and delight of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
“Lord, have mercy”, “Kyrie eleison” or “Kurielaison” is found in the liturgical worship from at least the 4th century and it’s use in Christian prayer may well be ancient. To ask for divine mercy is not to be seen as something gloomy and exclusively penitential. While the cry for mercy certainly involves sorrow for sin, it speaks also of divine forgiveness. It affirms that God’s loving kindness and compassion are greater than my brokenness and guilt.
