4th Sunday of Easter (A)

Short Reflection for the 4^th Sunday of Easter (A):

Readings: Acts 2: 14a. 36-41; 1 Peter 2: 20b – 25; John 10: 1-10

Selected Passage: “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (John 10: 9-10)

Meditation: Jesus is the gate to LIFE. In, through and with Him – we find life. The thieves and extremists come to destroy and to kill! By their fruits, we shall know them. Do they come to give and enhance life and well-being or they come to take away life and do harm to people and society? 

The Risen Lord is the TRUE Gate. He has come to give his life as a RANSOM for our sins and evil ways that we might be free from the slavery of sins and have life in great abundance. www.baaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

3rd Sunday of Easter (A)

Short Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Easter (A): “Break Bread with the Stranger”

Readings: Acts 2: 14, 22-33; 1 Peter 1: 17-21; Luke 24: 13-35

Selected Passage: But they urged him, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them. (Luke 24: 29)

Meditation: The key to the recognition of the Risen Lord is sharing shelter with the stranger and breaking one’s bread with stranger. The two disciples shared their abode and table with the stranger. This is the same challenge to us all – if we are to recognize the Risen Lord. In fact the sharing of our abode and bread with the needy is a lived Eucharist!

Our Christian community, more than ever, NEEDS to remember its conversation with the Risen Lord: ‘were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?

www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step: Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Palm Suncay (A)

Short Reflection for Palm Sunday (A): The Passion according to Matthew

Readings: Isaiah 50: 4-7; Philippians 2: 6-11; Matthew 26: 14 - 27: 66

Selected Passage:  “Then one of the Twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver, and from that time on he looked for an opportunity to hand him over”. (Matthew 26: 14-16)

Meditation:  The drama of the Passion raises several questions for our reflection. One is the betrayal of Jesus by his friend, Judas Iscariot, and the other apostles abandoned him, too. We, too, have betrayed the Lord and often for less than 30 pieces of silver!  The real miracle of the Passion is the grace and strength Jesus received from the Father to embrace the CROSS and drink the cup with courage and forbearance to the end. He shows the path – the Cross – to our on resurrection with him!

Today, as ever, God’s grace is never lacking and like Jesus, we too can embrace our cross and drink the cup with courage.  Cf. www.badaliyya.blogspot.com

DHIKR SIMPLE METHOD

1st step: Write the text or Dhikr (the Arabic word for REMEMBRANCE) in your heart.

2nd step: Let the text remain always in on your lips and mind - RECITING the text silently as often as possible...

3rd step:  Be attentive to the disclosure of the meaning/s of the text in your life.

Our Need to Kneel

OUR NEED TO KNEEL

Few things are as debilitating for true worship today as is the mistaken notion, popular in many circles, that somehow we belittle ourselves, are regressive, insult human dignity and put-down oppressed peoples, if we kneel, if we bow in obedience and if we genuflect so as to acknowledge that we are below and something else is above.

In the name of religious progress, we are teaching ourselves not to genuflect, not to kneel and not to think of ourselves (and feel ourselves) as living under God.

We mean this sincerely and there are some understandable reasons for why we feel this way, not the least of which is a religious upbringing that many of us are still reacting against. But this is not progress—religiously or otherwise. We are poorer because of this.

Genuflection is the ultimate moral act—and it lies at the basis of all morality. We become moral on that day when we first genuflect and know what we are doing.

Perhaps we need a new language which no longer uses phrases like "under" or ''below" (though, like Rohr, I doubt this) and perhaps we do need gestures other than genuflection and kneeling (though my imagination runs out of gas here). Whatever language and whatever the gesture, we need again to "kneel" and to "genuflect" and put ourselves "under" someone.

To kneel does not belittle or demean us. It does not make us smaller. It makes us larger. No person, female or male, is taller in terms of dignity and genuine adultness, than when she or he kneels in prayer, in adoration and in obedience.

There are few gestures singularly powerful as is that of bending the knee before the God who made us.

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