Galatians 3.13-14

Saint Francis Xavier

Feast of the Immaculate Conception of our Lady

Saint John of the Cross

The miraculous Cross at Mylapore

Christmas

Saint Stephen

Saint John the Apostle

How to prepare egg curry

God shows us in Jesus Christ the full depth of his merciful love. 

Through Jesus Christ the invisible God becomes visible. He becomes a man like us. This shows us how far God’s love goes: He bears our whole burden. He walks every path with us. He is there in our abandonment, our sufferings, our fear of death. He is there when we can go no farther, so as to open up for us the door leading into life.

God created us with a body(flesh) and a soul. At the end of the world he does not drop the “flesh” like an old toy. On the “Last Day” he will remake all creation and raise us up in the flesh—this means that we will be transformed but still experience ourselves in our element. For Jesus, too, being in the flesh was not just a phase. When the risen Lord showed himself, the disciples saw the wounds on his body.

For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven” .

In Jesus Christ, God reconciled the world to himself and redeemed mankind from the imprisonment of sin. “God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). In Jesus, God took on our mortal human flesh (INCARNATION), shared our earthly lot, our sufferings, and our death, and became one like us in all things but sin.

Prayer is turning the heart toward God. When a person prays, he enters into a living relationship with God.

Prayer is the great gate leading into faith. Someone who prays no longer lives on his own, for himself, and by his own strength. He knows there is a God to whom he can talk. People who pray entrust themselves more and more to God. Even now they seek union with the one whom they will encounter one day face to face. Therefore, the effort to pray daily is part of Christian life. Of course, one cannot learn to pray in the same way one learns a technique. As strange as it sounds, prayer is a gift one obtains through prayer.

We pray because we are full of an infinite longing and God has created us men for himself: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in you” (St. Augustine). But we pray also because we need to; Mother Teresa says,

“Because I cannot rely on myself, I rely on him, twenty-four hours a day.” 

Often we forget God, run away from him and hide. Whether we avoid thinking about God or deny him—he is always there for us. He seeks us before we seek him; he yearns for us, he calls us. You speak with your conscience and suddenly notice that you are speaking with God. You feel lonely, have no one to talk with, and then sense that God is always available to talk. You are in danger and experience that a cry for help is answered by God. Praying is as human as breathing, eating, and loving. Praying purifies. Praying makes it possible to resist temptations. Praying strengthens us in our

weakness. Praying removes fear, increases energy, and gives a second wind. Praying makes one happy.

Jesus learned to pray in his family and in the synagogue. Yet Jesus broke through the

boundaries of traditional prayer. His prayer demonstrates a union with his Father in heaven that is possible only to someone who is the Son of God. 

Jesus, who was God and man at the same time, grew up like other Jewish children of his time amid the rituals and prayer formulas of his people, Israel. Nevertheless, as the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple demonstrated (Lk 2:41ff.), there was something in him that could not be learned: an original, profound, and unique union with God, his Father in heaven. Like all other men, Jesus

hoped for another world, a hereafter, and prayed to God. At the same time, though, he was also part of that hereafter. This occasion already showed that one day people would pray to Jesus, acknowledge him as God, and ask for his grace.