MOVE BEYOND

Do we have a knowledge of who truly the Lord is as spoken of in today’s 1st reading in Isaiah. The Lord speaks that the things of the past shall not be remembered. This is a passage that needs to be heard when we go to confession. The Lord is all powerful and is a God who means what He says. When He says, I forgive, He means it. Do we really believe and take His word and what He said? If we truly know who God is then we should believe that the things of the past shall not be remembered. He wills to leave the things in the past. Although we may have no concept of how some things are, the devil wants to play with us, until the day we breathe our last. He would taunt us with such questions as, did the Lord really forget our sins? The saints who have moved into a deeper level or increase of faith believe this scripture. Yes we have sinned and offended the love of God to the point of shedding tears for true contrition but we do not fall into the path of taking back the guilt and shame upon us. The Lord has taken it away, He has healed us. The Lord pushes it away and forgives us with the tremendous love, mercy and power of God to forgive sins. But this is what the devil does, he wants to build a wall to prevent us from moving into a relationship with God. The Lord can forgive everyone as long as we take claim of our sins, shed our tears and fix our attention on the love of God. Amen. Hallelujah!


Isaiah 65:17-21
17 Thus says the LORD: Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18 Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness in what I create; for I create Jerusalem to be a joy and its people to be a delight;

We sometimes think that God does not answer our prayers but He does. Let us not fall into this wrong notion, lose hope and turn into different kinds of addictions which cause so much wasted pain and suffering. This is a wicked age and our life should redeem. Only the Lord our God can bring about this redemption in our lives. Amen. Hallelujah!

Psalms 30:2, 4, 5-6, 11-13
R: I will praise you, Lord, for you have rescued me.
1 [2] I will extol you, O LORD, for you drew me clear and did not let my enemies rejoice over me. 3 [4] O LORD, you brought me up from the nether world; you preserved me from among those going down into the pit...“Hear, O LORD, and have pity on me; O LORD, be my helper.” 11 [12] You changed my mourning into dancing;...

In today’s gospel, the royal officer is an example of a person who have exhibited an increase in the level of his faith. One of the fathers of the Church said that there are degrees of faith. This man’s beginning of faith started when his son was on the verge of dying. He hears that Jesus is there so he went and walked from Capernaum to Cana and typically it would take 14 hours to do that. This is the 1st degree, it takes an effort to walk for hours to see the Lord. The next step is when he hears the word although he doesn’t see that his son is healed, he believed. After that, there’s a deepening of faith that comes. When he heard what Jesus said, he realized that there is power in the word of Christ for what he was told he believed and also for the rest of his household. There are moments in our faith when we don’t see but do we truly believe that the word of the Lord is true. We know the words but are we convinced and do we really believe Him? It happens to each one of us, we know that the Lord has the power and we come and turn to Him with all our needs but have we reached to the point when we have increased and perfected our faith. During this period of Lent we are invited to deepen our faith. We can’t stay in the level of our 1st communion level of faith. We need to deepen our relationship with God and it must not remain that way. It is good to look at the level of our relationship with God and see if we have grown mature. We often have an excuse for ourselves. We ought to maintain that relationship with the Lord in the level of a child and yet we are called to mature in that relationship with Him. There is a need to broaden and expand our heart to a greater love. It takes effort and dedication on our part to do this. We must not sound to the Lord as an always, “I need, give me” person who is just concerned about ourselves. God will help us but we have to put our trust in Him. We ask the Lord for assistance and He responds but when we get what we want we forget Him and we don’t go back to Him. This is an immature way of interacting with the Lord. We need deepening of our relationship and to move beyond our current level of faith. Amen. Hallelujah!

John 4:43-54
...Jesus said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe.” 49 The royal official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. 51 While he was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. 52 He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” 53 The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe.