“Dear children! In this time of grace, when nature also
prepares to give the most beautiful colours of the
year, I call you, little children, to open your hearts to God the Creator for
Him to transform and mould you in His image, so that all the good which has
fallen asleep in your hearts may awaken to a new life and a longing towards
eternity. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
OPEN YOUR HEARTS TO GOD THE
CREATOR
In the first book of the Bible,
the book of Genesis, we have the first account of creation, the origin of the
world and mankind, the beginning or origin of the fall of our first parents and
the beginning of a wonderful announcement or promise of redemption.
The first word spoken by God was,
‘let there be light, and there was light. God saw that the light was good.’
After the work of creating God rested on the 7th day and made it
holy. When God rested on the 7th day it does mean that he was tired
and needed rest, but rather, he sat back and took great delight in the work of
his hands.
With the fall of our first parents
from grace, much of the good in them and in us was lost or had fallen asleep
and needed to be found and awakened once again to new life and a longing
towards eternity, a longing towards the eternal life promised in the first
announcement of the Good news of our salvation in Gen:3:15
“I will make you enemies of each other you and the woman your offspring and
her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike its heel.”
This month’s message begins by
reminding us that we are in a time of grace and just as nature prepares to open
itself to its Creator and give us the most beautiful colours
of the year, we too should open our hearts to God our Creator to be transformed
and moulded in His image. This is a special work of
God’s grace that we can have and begin to enjoy
right now today through the presence and action of God’s Holy Spirit first
given to us in baptism.
In this season of grace, the grace
of Lent, let us once again open our hearts to God the Creator, the ‘Supreme
Good,’ that he may awaken in us all those good and perfect gifts that come
down from Him, the Father of all light, and awaken in us the new life of grace
with a renewed longing and desire for that which last forever, God’s love.
In wisdom 11:22 we are told, ‘you
love all that exists, you hold nothing in abhorrence.
What God hates is not us his
little creatures on whom he lavishes the wonders of the universe but sin that
destroys us.
The very creation itself speaks to
us of the wonder of God’s love for us. How much more when we ponder during lent
the sorrowful passion of his Son that he sent to redeem us, and to awaken us
from our sleep of death to the new life of grace and peace, to awaken the good,
the good which has fallen asleep in our hearts, our families and even our
church today in parts of the world to the ‘Supreme Good.’ God
alone.
In the promise of redemption and
in the call of the Mother of the Redeemer, Christ her Son, we are a promise of
goodness, we become through the grace of God an image of the Divine goodness
and so most lovable and so beloved by God.
Every step upwards we take in the practise of virtue, a virtue that must surpass that of the
Scribes and Pharisees to enter the kingdom of heaven, we grow in holiness of
life and so more complete within us is the image of God within us. The effects
of that light of life within us are seen in what Paul describes as ‘complete
goodness, right living and truth. Ephs:5:9
And if this is true with every
step upwards in virtue, then the opposite is true with every step downward in
vice. In our experience of sin and vice we become uneasy before God, with
others and ourselves but once reconciled again with God and his church through
the sacrament of reconciliation that good in us is awakened or restored by the
mercy and justice of God.
O Lord, we acknowledge you as our
Lord and God. You are our loving Creator and Redeemer. We give you praise and
thanks for all your works. We are the work of your hands. Do not abandon us but
once again turn our eyes to you the ‘Supreme Good’ to your Son, Jesus, who
desires mercy. May all once again hear your call through Mary Queen of Peace,
who joins her voice to the voice of the church inviting us to open wide the
door of our hearts to Christ the Redeemer through whom all things came to be.
Fr Ciaran