Love and Live Christ
Introduction
- By today’s liturgy we enter into the Holy Week where we meditate the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus our Lord. Let this be a week of spiritual blessings.
- A story of two brothers - Two brothers came to the city in search of job from their native village. The rented a room lived together that room. The elder brother was an honest, hard-working and God-fearing man and the younger a dishonest, drug user, used to gamble and with many evil desires. Many a night the younger man would come back into the apartment late, drunk and with a lot of cash and the elder brother would spend hours pleading with him to mend his ways and live a decent life. But the young man would have none of it. One night the younger brother runs into the house with a knife and blood-stained clothes. “I killed a man,” he announced. In a few minutes the house was surrounded by police and the two brothers knew there was no escape. “I did not mean to kill him,” stammered the young brother, “I don’t want to die.” By now the police were knocking at the door. The elder brother had an idea. He exchanged his clothes with the blood-stained clothes of his younger brother. The police, by seeing the elder brother with the bloody cloths and knife, arrested him, tried him and condemned him to death for murder. He was killed and his junior brother lived. He died for his brother. The younger brother became a new man and began to follow all the good virtues that his brother showed to him and led thereafter a life of thanks giving to his brother.
- This is what happened two-thousand years ago on Calvary. Jesus gave his life for us sinners by taking all our sins up on his shoulders. By the cross we all are saved.
Content
- What should be our response to Jesus’ love? Our response can be summarized into one phrase, “LIFE OF GRATITUDE”.
o How to express our gratitude to Jesus? We say to Jesus by looking at the cross ‘thank you Jesus’. It is good, but we are called to do much more than that.
o For example we usually do not thank our parents for bringing us in to the world, for giving us nourishments in our younger days. Instead we live a life of gratitude by loving them, obeying them, taking care of them and respecting them.
- Therefore our gratitude to Jesus must be expressed in two ways; Love Him and Live Him.
o Love Jesus
§ It is an emotional attachment to Jesus. We grow in our emotional attachment to Jesus by observing the various pious practices such as reading the gospel passages on the passion and death of Jesus, going through the stations of the cross, visita iglesia, by hearing and seeing about the passion of Jesus and so on.
§ Let us spend time to meditate on the passion of Christ in this Holy Week.
o Live Jesus
§ It calls for a renewed life.
§ It invites us to have a conversion experience as the younger brother in the story had.
Conclusion
- This Holy Week is meant for coming closer to Jesus our savior by loving Him and living Him.
- Let us meditate on the saving mysteries of Jesus and enter into a renewed life.
No comments:
Post a Comment