Lift the latch
"The Good News is free and is for everyone:
we are all of equal importance in the eyes of the Lord."
Send Thy Spirit Lord now unto me / That He may touch my eyes and make me see / Show me the truth concealed within Thy Word / For in the Book revealed / I see Thee Lord.
( W. F. Sherwin ).
These words articulate the importance of asking the Holy Spirit to come and make His home in us and to reveal Himself to us in various ways: in the written word, through people, through television and through events. It is being reminded of what the Lord has said, and being reminded often, which counts.
Every pure thing, every holy book, and every righteous person speaks of God to the man or woman who wants to have a pure heart. Life takes on a whole new and vibrant dimension the moment we lift the latch, and invite Jesus to become the centre of our lives. Right now, we have only to do this in all sincerity, and we will look the same, but we will never be the same again.
"If you have ears listen. The more you do this, the more you will understand what I tell you." ( Mark 4; 24 ). So let us ask the Lord this very minute, to give us such ears. The more we live out the Gospel in our lives, the more we will SEE. So let us ask the Lord to let us see, also right now. Jesus was not just a pleasant, gentle man, charming but ineffectual: He was a real man and courageous enough to use a whip in the temple. Nothing ineffectual about that!
Let us ask God to reveal Jesus to us in the person of another; the saints are the good news made visible. The Good News is free and is for everyone: We are all of equal importance to the Lord. Then Peter opened his mouth and said: "of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. ( Acts IO: 24 ).
Pascal tells us that "all the troubles of the world come upon us because we refuse to sit quietly for a while each day in our rooms". If we really love God, we will feel completely safe. We will not be afraid of anything. Fear is mentioned 365 times in the Bible. At all times we will be full of joyous anticipation and of peace. We will be free. Let us ponder this.
"If you make My Word your home you will know the truth and the truth will make you free". ( John 8:32). I am free when given the opportunity, I choose not what pleases me most, but what makes me most a person. I am most a person when I take God at His Word and BELIEVE Him. I am complete in Christ when I give Him my will and pray this prayer: I want, what you want Lord, for me to day. Then He is ready to say: Whatsoever thou shall ask the Father in My Name believing, you will receive.
"Karl Rahner has this to say concerning this promise:" To ask for something in Jesus' name does not mean that we invoke Him verbally and then desire whatever our turbulent, divided heart or our appetite, our wretched mania for everything and anything, happens to hanker for. No, askng in Jesus' s name means entering into Him, being one with Him in love and faith. If He is in us by faith, in love, in grace,in his Spirit, then our petition arises from the centre of our being, which is Himself, and if all our petition and desire is gathered up and fused in Him and His Spirit, then the Father hears us.
Then our petition becomes simple and straightforward, harmonious, sober and unpretentious. Then what St. Paul says in the letter to the Romans applies to us. We do not know how to pray as we ought , but the Spirit himself intercedes for us, praying the one prayer, 'Abba! Father!' He longs for that from which the Spirit and Jesus himself have proceeded: He longs for God, He asks God for God, on our behalf he asks of God.
Everything is included and contained in this prayer....(If we pray in this way) we shall see that God really answers our prayer, in one way or another. Then we will no longer feel this 'one way or the another' is a feeble excuse offered by the pious, and the Gospel, for unanswered prayer. No. Our prayer IS answered, but precisely because it is prayer in Jesus's Name; and what we ultimately pray for is, for the Lord to grow in our lives, to fill our existence with Himself to triumph, to gather into one our scattered life, the thousand and one desires of which we are made.
To pray in Jesus's Name is to have one's prayer answered, to receive God and God's blessing, and then, even amid tears, even in pain, even in indigence, even when when it seems that one has still not been heard, the heart rests in God and that - while we are still here on pilgrimage, far from the Lord - is perfect joy."
This IS WHY JESUS IS CONSTANTLY SAYING; UP TO NOW, YOU HAVE NOT ASKED FOR ANYTHING IN MY NAME. ASK AND YOU WILL RECEIVE
Every good thought which enters our minds is from God and every negative or destructive thought is from the evil one.The following story is an illustration of this:
The pain from the abscess on my gum was agonizing and the doctor who administered the antibiotics assured me that I was in for a week of intense pain. After a time of deliberation I made up my mind to bear this suffering in silence and to offer it for the repentance of some person who might be on death row in America, and who would by my efforts, be persuaded against his better will, to kiss the crucifix before being given that lethal injection.
Imagine my surprise and joy six mornings later, when on opening the Malta Times, the following words leaped up at me:
William X of
XXX
in America, was executed yesterday at 6 a.m by lethal injection.
Such is the power of a word from The Holy Spirit.
The condition of a happy life is to so live, that the trials and vicissitudes of life do not impose their moods on us. As the poet Alfred Tennyson so aptly puts it: "With power on thine own act and on the world".
Anita Kilbride - Jones.
St, Paul's Bay,Malta.
