This content is restricted to subscribers
About Elizabeth Tichvon
Book Review: “The Four Keys to Everlasting Love: How Your Catholic Marriage Can Bring You Joy for a Lifetime”
This content is restricted to subscribers
Hope in Rising
This content is restricted to subscribers
She is Our Mother, in the Order of Grace
This content is restricted to subscribers
Follow Every Perfect Moment
This content is restricted to subscribers
“Why does this generation seek a sign?” (Mark 8:12).
A reflection on today’s Sacred Scripture:
“Why does this generation seek a sign?” (Mark 8:12).
Why? we answer back. Why should we believe in Your kindness when You allow the world to suffer?
Lent begins this week, and despite the mix of heartache and joy that will accompany the faithful, they’ll hold tightly to their belief without asking God why He allows suffering – especially His Son’s. They’ll accept as true what they cannot see, cannot touch – cannot fully comprehend.
Faith is a supernatural gift from God to us, but in the next forty days, many will doubt because they won’t receive mighty wonders and signs, despite their fasting and prayers. How God reveals Himself to us is uniquely ours and is a part of His gift. Our gift back to Him is our complete trust in His ways, whether we receive a wondrous sign or not. In return, He deepens our faith with understanding and we begin to receive all we ask for because we stop asking with misgivings but with the Wisdom He so faithfully gives us.
Book Review: “Joy to the World,” by Dr. Scott Hahn
“If the Lord is our joy, our joy cannot be taken away. It cannot be lost…Joy had come to the world, and it had come to stay.” – Dr. Scott Hahn
As I turned the pages of Dr. Scott Hahn’s “Joy to the World” the light of understanding that God gave each of us sparked, and soon I was experiencing the instilling gifts of the Holy Spirit. Anyone who has prayed for such gifts knows how joyful it can be when they appear…Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge – who knew this book of inspiring meditations would give such a comprehensive glimpse into the story of Christ’s birth.
Among Dr. Hahn’s scholarly reads, I was most taken with “Joy to the World,” because his usual preciseness is mingled with such childlike wonder as he takes us through this Holy season with Sacred Scripture in one hand and the Church’s life giving Tradition in the other. Already in the first chapter I was heartened when he “sees” the radiance of the teenaged Virgin Mary on his young daughter’s face during his family’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
In the end, we come to understand why he believes this wonder is the key to the New Evangelization, “Christmas sets us apart. Christmas calls us to share in divine love and then to share that love with an unbelieving world…People find it irresistible and irrefutable.”
So this year as we light the first candle on our Advent wreaths, we can do it with a deeper understanding of the events surrounding the reason for this miraculous season of God’s saving love. The Truth is here, but like the Magi, we must seek it. The Truth is Christ, and like the star, “Joy to the World” helps us find Him.
* * *
Read more reviews at Dr. Hahn’s “Joy to the World” Blog Tour with Image Books, going on now through December 11!
Weary Souls Rejoice!
Wherever we turn these days, Christmas music plays, and for some of us this year, the words to the traditional carols we’ve come to know by heart have suddenly taken on new meaning. Old, familiar jingles about Christ’s birth now seem to resound with significance, bursting with the presence of His Gospel!
The popular hymn, O Holy Night, is full of such moving words; it speaks of the world lying long in sin, “’til He appeared and the soul felt its worth.” Such were the great crowds of the lame, blind, deformed and mute in today’s Gospel.
Imagine them – the sick and weary, the hungry, approaching Jesus up on the mountain, filled with “a thrill of hope.” Envision them “falling on their knees” as our compassionate Savior placed them at His feet and cured them! Jesus took pity on that crowd of four thousand and fed them with only seven loaves and a few fish. Imagine the “weary souls rejoicing!”
Jesus holds no less compassion for our weariness and hunger as He continues to heal us with His Word and feed us through the Eucharist. We give thanks for these gifts which we receive in faith, and rejoice along with the souls on that mountain, “Sweet hymns of joy! In grateful chorus raise we! Let all within us praise His holy Name!”
Look Alive!
“And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Luke 21:27).
As November ends, so do the Gospel readings about the Second Coming, when, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “…the glorious Christ will reveal the secret disposition of hearts and will render to each man according to his works, and according to his acceptance or refusal of grace.” (Para. 682)
Only Christ knows when that day will come, but in today’s Gospel, He forewarns of signs in the sun, moon and stars, roaring of the waves in the sea and people dying of fright! When these things begin to happen, He tells us to “stand erect and raise your heads because your redemption is at hand” (Luke 21:28).
How will we have the strength of mind and body to stand erect amidst such frightful occurrences?
Jesus taught that if we’ve prepared ourselves to receive Him by keeping our hearts filled with the light of His love, by loving our neighbor and serving Him in faith through all our earthly struggles, we can be confident that on the Last Day, He will renew our strength and remove all fear.
But we must ask Him to create in us a new spirit and work hard to keep it alive, and we must start now. What perfect timing with the start of Advent! How better to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ Second Coming than by recalling the wondrous days leading to His First Coming.
May your Advent be filled with love and peace!
On Giving Thanks
A Thanksgiving reflection on today’s Gospel Reading:
“One of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice” (Luke 17:15).
Jesus always responds to prayers made in faith. The faith of the ten lepers brought them a miraculous cure, but the faith of one brought him back to the feet of Jesus, where he learned that his conviction had brought him something even greater: salvation, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” (Luke 17:19)
All things are possible with God, but only in faith can we accept the mystery of His power the way the lone leper did when he returned to thank Jesus. One would expect such a reaction from a leper whose lesions suddenly disappeared, but it didn’t happen that way for the other nine. And it doesn’t always happen that way for us, even though the miracles in our own lives go beyond physical healings every day.
God has pity on us every time we ask, not just when His answer is visible like the lepers. Trusting in this is the miracle of faith, and in its fullness we find salvation.