The Christian life is full of an amazing and rejoicing grace in God when our souls meet with true repentance of sins and embrace the unfathomable mercy of God. No one is a Christian because he or she merits being one. It is all grace and nothing but grace. This is the most humble fact we must be conscious of daily.
Once again, we begin the season of Advent and a new liturgical calendar of the Church´s year of grace in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ. Advent is a moment of grace to be awake while waiting. It is a new season of waiting, preparing, and being alert for the coming of the Lord. The world awaited his coming more than 2000 years ago. The world anticipates his coming in glory at the end of time. Equally, the world awaits his coming daily in every event and experience of our lives.
One basic and undeniable fact of our Christian life is that God always calls or invites us to the feast of joy. The Eucharist and communitarian liturgical celebrations are enriching with the Word of God and the communion of brothers and sisters.
God always invites us to a life of grace, joy, and celebration. He invites us to an intimate, rich, and abundant life with Him and in Him. God´s invitation is with a wide-armed, open-hearted, and generous hospitality. That is gratuitous, full, and lavish.
The Christian vocation and mission is a life of grace in Christ Jesus and not something we merit. It is God’s work and we are only collaborators in its realization through his grace acting in us. God is the one who initiates, designs, invites and executes the mission through us. That is why it is called “Missio Dei”.
However, our Christian calling is complex and not easy at all. That is living the Christian vocation and realizing our God-given mission is a seemingly impossible task humanly. It is absolutely necessary to live and implore God’s grace and help.
It is all grace and nothing more: Christianity and the Christian life we live as priests, ministers, and members of the Church. The Christian life is an amazing grace that saves us all from our wretchedness. Concretely, a happy or blessed Christian life amidst difficulties and problems is the most profound practical way to live a godly or spiritual life.
LOVE, JOY, PEACE, GRACE AND LIFE The beautiful themes of Christmas are love, joy, peace, grace and life. It reveals to us that: God is love 1 John 4: 8, 16. It is assured of the joy of the Lord…
One of the beauties of our Christian faith is the mercy of God that always finds us wretched sinners when we are lost. God’s mercy finds and reaches us profoundly more than we can ever imagine. The nature and essence of God is mercy. This mercy is the saving and amazing grace that always finds and saves us even when we are spiritually dead, lost or weak.
What makes Christianity unique from all other religions is the inexhaustible mercy of God in Christ Jesus. The Christian faith is never a religion of punishment. No matter the gravity of our errors, how many times and the manner of our mistakes, the mercy of God reaches all. In Christianity, therefore, Christ is the face of God’s mercy shown to lost humanity.
The principal or central theme of this fifth Sunday of Lent is that there is empowerment through the grace and mercy of God in our sinfulness. God is never interested in the death or punishment of anyone of us due to sin. His grace and mercy always meet us in our state or moment of wretchedness.
Indeed, Lent is the longest spiritual retreat every Christian can or should embark on to prepare and enter joyfully into the Easter joy of the Resurrected Lord. Lenten season is a moment of grace and mercy. We are inviting three actions of forgiveness, conversion and reconciliation with God, others and ourselves, with the attitudes of praying, fasting and almsgiving.