Friday, First Week of Ordinary Time, Year C

(Hebrews 4:1-5, 11 / Mark 2:1-12)

I guess you are quite familiar with today’s gospel reading. It’s the story of how Jesus cured a paralysed man. The man must have been bed-ridden for a while now, and perhaps had lost the company of many family members and friends who had given up on him. This faithful day, four of his old friends visited him and were talking about Jesus, the new prophet in town who was preaching powerfully and working miracles. The sick man listened with interest and when he learnt that Jesus was even within the vicinity, he indicated interest in seeing Him. His friends were enthusiastic about helping him meet Jesus; how they wished their long-time friend would be well again.

The young men carried their friend and set off. When they arrived where Jesus was, there was a crowd. They tried to force their way through the crowd but it was too thick. A brilliant idea came to one of them: they were going to go through the roof. While two of them were dismantling the roof, the two others were attaching the four corners of the mat upon which the paralyse lay with ropes. Then they begin to lower him gradually down the roof. By this time, everybody had taken notice of what was happening; Jesus Himself had halted His preaching, and they all regarded upwards in a strange silence. The man was now on the floor. Jesus looked down at him and looked up at his friends. He sighed and said, “Son, your sins are forgiven”. Before you could say “no noise”, the sick man was already on his feet. Jesus had cured him of his paralysis. He picked up his mat and went home rejoicing.

Those four guys are worth emulating. The first thing that struck me about them is the attention and love they had for their friend. The other notable thing is their solidarity in pursuing a good course. The third lesson concerns their positive creativity. Love knows how to get around obstacles; it knows when to break the law. So they dismantled the ceiling (and fixed it back). Then we have to mention their ardent and dogged faith. Jesus even noticed that. These young men were just superb. As we reflect on the virtues they exhibited, let’s endeavour to replicate them in our lives.

Have a nice day and God loves you.

Thursday, First Week of Ordinary Time, Year C

(Hebrews 3:7-14 / Mark 1:40-45)

Going through the readings of today, I was going to share with you a reflection I had titled “Touching the Untouchables”. I was going to accentuate the really moving gesture of Jesus touching the leper. Then I would have presented it as a model for all Christians and indeed all people of God will. May be we’ll have another opportunity to exploit that; but for now, in continuing with the subject of yesterday’s reflection, let’s stay on with the boundless love of God.

If yesterday we saw how His love moved Him to cure Peter’s mother-in-law, today we witness that love stretched even further. This time around it was a leper. Now many of us have never encountered a leper. So it may help our reflection if I describe it a bit to you. It’s an ugly and chronic disease that disfigures the skin, weakens the muscles and snaps the nerves.  In the time of Jesus, it was even more grievous because leprosy had a social and religious downside: not only was the leper ostracised from the community but also he was made to feel alienated from God.    

When the leper of today’s gospel met Jesus there was more than one thing at stake. Jesus risked contracting the deadly disease but even more so, He risked becoming religiously unclean. Yet when the leper approached Him, He didn’t mind to stretch out His hand to touch the leper and heal Him. He shared the pain of the man and was even ready to take his place. And that was indeed the case, for at the end of the story we saw the restored man leaving his isolation and running into the town to the priest; but as for Jesus, “it was impossible for Him to enter the town openly {but} He remained outside in deserted places” (Mark 1:45). They swapped positions, so much His love for us.

Have a nice day and God loves u.

Wednesday, First Week of Ordinary Time, Year C

Hebrews 2:14-18 / Mark 1:29-13

Many people like to talk about the power of God because power seems to be the in thing. I prefer to talk about the love of God. After all, love is a stronger attribute than power! If someone loves you, though he or she may not have much resource or power,  he will do all in his power to express that love, to make you happy. But we know of those who have much power and little love, and how they have used their power to trample down on others rather than help. Let me suggest to you that it is not so much of the power of God that saves us as it His love.

The first reading from the letter to the Hebrews reveals how God manifested His deep love for us in Jesus. Jesus became man in flesh and blood; He took on Himself a human nature like ours to feel firsthand everything we feel, to understand personally how we think and why we do what we do. As Scriptures put it, He was like us in every way but sin. All of these proofs of His love for us.

So when his disciples spoke to Him about Peter’s mother in-law who was dying of a deadly fever, He went to her immediately, moved by compassion, and healed her. Here we see both the manifestation of his love and the display of His power. That’s  how lucky we are: we have a God who has both love and power. He loves us so much that He is ready to go to any length to see that we are saved and ultimately happy; and fortunately He also has the power to accomplish whatever His love for us prompts Him to do for us. We can therefore confidently turn to Him in prayer and trust.

Lord, increase our faith!

Have a nice day and God loves you!  

First Week, Ordinary Time, Tuesday, 15 January 2013

(Hebrews 2:5-12/Mark 1:21-28)

Human beings are neither the strongest nor the biggest of the animals. We are not even the finest. Why then are we the most dignified? Well, it has to be because God the Creator wanted it so. Have you noticed the striking change of tune regarding man in the Genesis' account of creation? All other creatures came into being with a majestic "Let there be". When it came to man, God paused and as if having a consultation with Himself, declared: "Let Us make man in our own image and likeness". And so it was, a creature bearing the image and likeness the Creator. After He had done this, God appointed human beings as master and care-taker of the whole of creation. Up to this point, however, we were but creatures, noble and glorified creatures bearing the imprint and the likeness of the creature.

Something unfortunate and fortunate (depending on which perspective you look at it) happened. Man sinned against God by pride and disobedience. God decided to make out of the bad situation an opportunity to draw man closer to Himself by proving to him how much He loves Him. When Jesus came into the picture, as the First Reading from the letter to the Hebrews bears witness, it was the fulfillment of God’s plan. Man got more then he could bargain for: God went down to the extent of becoming man so that the children of men can become children of God. See, we've got a “promotion”; we are no more mere creatures but adopted sons and daughters of God, thanks to Jesus Christ. 

If this is how valuable we are in the sight of God, how much more should we respect and value each other. Every human person deserves respect regardless of what she has or has not. Does not the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights state at a primary instance that “All human beings are born free and equal in DIGNITY and rights? No human soul is of less valuable than the other. 

There are many factors that militate against this dignity: the devil for one – we hear in the Gospel reading how he possessed and tormented a poor soul. It’s Jesus’ concern to restore and reaffirm human dignity. We should be on the same track.

Have a nice day and God loves you.

First week, Ordinary Time, Monday, 14 January 2013

(Hebrews 1:1-6 / Mark 1:14-20)

I would like to engrave in our hearts and subconsciousnesses a firm, unshakable and undaunted conviction concerning the love that God has for you. As a matter of fact, it is God’s earnest desire that you understand and appreciate the depth of His love for you. Many of us know John 3:16 by heart and have somehow gotten used to the saying that God loves us perhaps even to the extent that it no longer makes much import. So it will be well if you use the opportunity that the first reading of today gives us to remind ourselves of the extent of that love.

The Scripture says that in time past, God spoke to our fathers in various and many ways through the prophets but that in our days, He has spoken to us by His Son. You see clearly how much God desires to communicate to us and to establish a relationship with us. He has attempted various means in the past to achieve this. If it wasn’t through dreams and visions as in the case of Abraham and Jacob, He would communicate through oracles. But these means still seemed so inadequate to Him, that He thought to Himself, “What if I went personally to communicate with these my lovely creatures one-on-one as a father would chat with his son?” It was thus decided and so did God come in the person of His divine Son to speak with us not through intermediaries but personally. That way, at least, He hopes to convince us of His love for us and win our love too.

If we ever love God, it is because He loved us first and if we love God, we must express it in the love we show to every person even the most undeserving of our love.

Have a nice day and God loves you.

TRUE LOVE BY TU FACE – An Ultra-dimensional Remix

It is interesting to realise how much human love reveals and shades light on the unsoundable mystery of God’s love. The other day I was listening to TuFace Idibia’s ‘True Love’… I don’t know how it happened: my ear was hearing one thing and my mind was hearing a different thing. These two parts of me were operating on different frequencies. One was in the realm of rhythm and rhymes, the other was busy trying to decipher spiritual truths. In the meanwhile, there was this constant interaction between human love and divine love, and I will like to share the result with you. But first let’s listen to the rhymes and wordings of the original.

LINE 1: You see true love she used to live here before, but I got messed up and threw her out the door. Now I don’t feel airy like I used to before, all the things we used to say, all the way we used to dey, how we used to play. Now there’s an emptiness inside of my soul, and it seems my unmanliness is start to show. And God knows I cannot take it no more that’s why I am asking you how do I come up with you.

REFRAIN: See, I’m looking for someone that satisfies me, looking for someone that loves me completely, looking for someone that shows me true love. And I’m searching for a kind of possibility, someone that truly loves me for me, someone that come and be my true love...

LINE 2: Now loneliness is the order of my day. Since she’s gone I feel like fading away. Lord, na die I dey, Oh God. See, na she bin dey mek my head bin dey swell; now that she’s gone I feel like jumping in a well. Oh! I cannot take it no more, that why I am asking you how do I come up with you.

True love, True love, True love, where’s my true love? True love, True love, True love, where’s my true love?

The first observation we would like to make is that the “True Love” of the song is unidentified, that is to say, she is not named. We are only told that “she used to live here before”. The song-writer goes ahead to give us a picture of what life is without his True Love (see line 1 and 2). In the refrain, he tries a qualitative description of True Love. Then he concludes by asking an inviting riddle-like question: “where is my true love?” It was as if TuFace was asking: “From the information and description I have given above, can any of you guess who and where my true love is?” The answer we propose to this riddle is, GOD IS OUR TRUE LOVE.

To justify this position, let us go back to our song, to the description of True Love that we have in the refrain. Four main definitions of True Love can be deduced: True love is (a) Someone that satisfies me (b) Someone that loves me completely (c) Someone that shows me true love (d) Someone the truly loves me for me. Now, in the first place, we ask the question: who is that person that really satisfies me? My parents? My girlfriend? My boyfriend? My wife? My best friend? My child? No, nobody can truly satisfy me. My parents may satisfy my material needs by providing me with all the money and provision I need but they may not be able to satisfy my need for independence or for knowledge. My girlfriend may be able to give me all the emotional comfort and physical pleasure I need but would that really satisfy me? No! Experience shows that this kind of satisfaction is momentary and ephemeral. The tensions experienced even in the most rosy relationships attest to the fact that they are not satisfactory. My best friend can be as caring as he or she can be disobliging. So in the final analysis, the truth remains that only God can truly satisfy me. “How do you mean?”, you may ask. Well, the truth that it is only in God that we find true satisfaction is a certitude of faith and only with an attitude of faith can it be fully appreciated and experienced. But it is not an assertion that is unreasonable. If it is true that it is God who made us, who made us the way we are with our insatiable heart, then it follows that He has got the resources to fill in that space of all our longings for love. People normally make budgets according to the size of their revenue. You never see a Coca Cola bottle that is filled to the brim; there is always this empty space between the neck of the bottle and the cork. The producer intentionally leaves the space though he always has enough of the Coke drink to fill it. Of course anyone can fill the space perhaps with water or any other drink whatsoever, but if you want to get the unique and authentic Coca Cola taste, you would have to go to the Coca Cola producer. Human beings are like Coke bottles, we are never full, never satisfied, and never really satisfiable except in and by God, our Creator. Any attempt to satisfy us outside God is only superficial. This is what the venerable and well-informed St Augustine meant when he asserted: Lord, our hearts were made for you and they are restless until they rest in You. God is that Someone that satisfies me.

TuFace also presented True Love as “Someone that loves me completely”. The key word here is ‘completely’. It means perfectly, absolutely, totally, utterly and thoroughly. Who on earth can boast of loving someone completely? Who can boast of being loved completely? As a matter of fact, human love is by its very nature fractioned and rationed. We usually have many objects of our love; nobody loves just one thing or one person. We normally ration out our love to various persons and interests. For example, I love my mother, I love my sister and brothers, I love my dad, I love my friends, I love football, I love philosophy, I love plantain chips, and of course I love myself. You see how I shared out my love to various people, interests and things? I can’t therefore love anyone completely simply because I don’t have a complete love. This is true for every human being. The case is simple: (1) Only someone who is perfect can love perfectly, absolutely and completely, for you can not give what you don’t have. (2) No human being is perfect. (3) Therefore no human being can love completely. If like TuFace you are looking for “someone to love you completely”, I have a suggestion: God. Who is God? God is Love (1John 4:8) God=love. God is love, love is God. He is perfect and complete love, the only One capable of loving completely. He loves each individual uniquely and completely as if that individual soul is the only person in the world. Interestingly, His complete love does not get exhausted because it is eternal and infinite as He Himself is eternal and infinite. God is that Someone that loves me completely.

We go to point 3: Someone that shows me true love. The logic is the same – only someone who has true love can show true love. So I will leave you to reason it out yourselves. First and foremost, you need to find out what true love really means, and then see if that can be applied to any human being in the strict sense of the word. I bet you will discover that though human love can be sincere and true to a certain extent, only God can really show true love. The erudite apostle, Paul tried to express this point when he wrote: “For Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty does one die for a just person, though perhaps for a good person one might even find courage to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us” (Romans 5:6-8). So just sit and count your blessings, beginning from the gift of life and you will immediately realise that God is that Someone that shows me true love.

The fourth definition is as follows: True Love is Someone that truly loves me for me. Here again the stakes are really high; let’s see who can attain it! Can any human being reach it? Well, it has been observed that we human beings usually place conditions and give reasons for loving another. Listen to this everyday (voiced or unvoiced) expressions of love and you will understand what I mean: I love you because you are so beautiful; the reason why I love mom is that she hardly gets angry; (I love you because) you make me feel good about myself; (I love you because) I guess my life will be incomplete without you; (I love you and like staying around you because) you have a very good sense of humour; (I love you because) it feels good to love and to be loved; I love hardworking people like you; I love you because we are brothers; I love you just because of God; I just love children (i.e. I love you just because you’re a child); I love you just the way you are (in other words, I love you because though you are hot tempered, you can control you anger, though you are not so pretty, you are caring, though you can be very annoying, you are so unpretentious and sincere; in short, I love you because you have a mixture of good and bad qualities that is OK with me) and we can go on and on. You see, we always place conditions to our love for others. For this reason, no one can say he truly loves another person solely for that person’s sake. In other to find that Someone that truly loves me for me, we have to look somewhere else, we have to look up, up to heaven. God is that only Someone. He loves without condition; He gives no reason for loving. Remember we said He is love, i.e. it is in His very nature to love, He cannot but love, He cannot be without loving because He is love. So He loves naturally, spontaneously, freely, without distinction or discrimination, without condition or consideration. It is He who “makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45). And even as His murders were hammering nails into His hands and feet, he still loved them with all His heart, and He said this sincere, heart-felt prayer for them: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” The conclusion is that God is that Someone who truly loves me for me because He is the only one really capable of loving unconditionally.

Friends! You may now agree with me that the cause of many frustrations and depressions in our today’s world and time is due to the fact that many people do not really know who their True Love is and where to find her. Guys generally think that True Love is found in the ideal lady: beautiful, shapely, sexy, tender, understanding, intelligent. Girls presume that True Love is Mr Right: Tall, brawny, rich, caring, generous, handsome and cool. The result of this kind of extrapolation is often disappointment. I am even persuaded to think that many of the failures in relationship may be God’s way of telling the couples involved that there is a higher and more perfect love than what they experience and to which they should also aspire. The truth is that human love is noble and ennobling, worthy to be sort after and enjoyable when attained. There is hardly anything as beautiful as the feeling of being in love. But, but, I will save you a lot of trouble by telling you that despite its merits, human love is always imperfect, incomplete and compromised by inherent tensions. God is our only true love and human love is true only to the extent that it corresponds and reflects the true love of God.

If you see TuBaba, tell him I have found his True Love, the True Love of the world, our True Love. You might have ‘messed up (by sinning) and threw Her out of the door’ of your lives. And now, you don’t feel peaceful like you used to. Perhaps you are now feeling this emptiness inside of your soul and your insecurity has become so blatant. May be you’re currently experiencing this deep loneliness that no-one or no-thing seems to be able to fill, and you feel like fading away, like jumping in a well. I’ve got a suggestion: Repent, go back to God, your True Love. He will welcome you it a big bear embrace and your life will once more be animated with peace and joy.

Life in short

People, Life! Life is a web. You won't understand it until you find the thread that keeps it hanging. I mean that without God life makes no sense.