Man does not live on bread alone,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.MT 4:4B
GENESIS 3:9-24
My Soul's Beloved,
but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.MT 4:4B
GENESIS 3:9-24
My Soul's Beloved,
The first question God asks in the Bible is, 'Where are you?' You seek us relentlessly, You will not let us escape no matter how gravely we have sinned. Guilty and filled with shame, we flee from Your Presence, ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden; I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ but You will not cease looking for us until You find us. Having lost our innocence, stripped of grace and virtue, we try unsuccessfully to cover our nakedness and You ask, ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ And then You ask the question to which You already know the terrible answer, ‘Have you been eating of the tree I forbade you to eat?’
Our first parents' sin has infected us from conception and true to our sinful nature we try to shift our culpability, blame, and guilt on to someone else. When questioned Adam whined, ‘It was the woman you put with me; she gave me the fruit, and I ate it.’ When You turn Your gaze to the woman and exclaim, ‘What is this you have done?’ she too shifts the blame saying, ‘The serpent tempted me and I ate.’
God is just and true love demands justice, the penalty for willful wrongdoing must be paid, and the penalty is eternal separation from God and death.
But true love also always wins and here we have the first hint of the Good News, hope for all mankind. God will become the perfect Scapegoat for the sins of all mankind but we will have to wait for the fullness of time when He will send You, His Son to pierce time and space and redeem the world.
God banished Adam and Eve from paradise but not before He takes pity on them and covers their nakedness with skins. The Just Judge pronounces His judgment.
To Adam, God says, ‘Because you listened to the voice of your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat,
Judgement falls on creation as well, ‘Accursed be the soil because of you. With suffering shall you get your food from it
every day of your life. It shall yield you brambles and thistles,
and you shall eat wild plants. With sweat on your brow shall you eat your bread.' And death has entered the world, 'Until you return to the soil, as you were taken from it. For dust you are and to dust you shall return.’
And to Eve this sentence is given:
‘I will multiply your pains in childbearing,
you shall give birth to your children in pain.
Your yearning shall be for your husband,
yet he will lord it over you.’
you shall give birth to your children in pain.
Your yearning shall be for your husband,
yet he will lord it over you.’
The gates of Paradise were to be firmly shut until the time of the fulfillment of God's promise.
PSALM 90:2-6,12-13
My Soul's Beloved,
You are good, You are eternal, You are our God in whom we take refuge. Hidden in You sin cannot touch us nor evil harm us.
You took our death, our condemnation, and our punishment upon Yourself and now we have hope. You have redeemed us. No matter the length of our days we know that in the end, we will behold You face to face.
May we never forget that our lives are no longer our own. We belong to You. We have been purchased at a great price- the price of Your Blood. May we always be grateful and never cease to give You praise, worship, adoration, and thanksgiving for as long as we have breath in our bodies.
Our lives are fleeting but our soul is eternal. Grant us the grace to keep Your Word, and we will walk in the Light of Truth always, and remain on the path that leads to union with You forever.
MARK 8:1-10
My Soul's Beloved,
My Soul's Beloved,
In today's Gospel passage Mark describes the second miracle of the multiplication of the seven loaves and few fish in order to feed a crowd of four thousand.
Once again we recognize that You are a God of compassion. A multitude had followed You to this deserted place to listen to You. For three whole days, their souls were nourished on a plenitude of spiritual food but their bodies were famished. You called Your disciples to You and said to them, ‘I feel sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. If I send them off home hungry they will collapse on the way; some have come a great distance.’
The more we distance ourselves from the cares and worries of the world and follow You the greater the grace and gift of intimate fellowship with You. You are concerned about our whole person, our spiritual, as well as our natural needs, for we have a body and a spirit and both need nourishment.
Once again the disciples demonstrate that they are still slow to understand. They respond to the question You asked once before with the same answer, ‘Where could anyone get bread to feed these people in a deserted place like this?’ And once again You ask them to look at their own resources, ‘How many loaves have you?’ They said, ‘Seven.’ The crowds were instructed to sit down. As before, You took the loaves, gave thanks to Your Father, broke them, and handed them over to the disciples to distribute among the crowd. You also blessed the few fish they had and handed them over to be distributed.
After eating as much as they desired the disciples collected seven baskets of the scraps left over. The Church never runs out of blessings, graces, and favors. These are handed to the Apostles by You from Your inexhaustible treasury of riches in grace and mercy and they, in turn, are charged with the task of distributing them to the members of Your Body.
After working this stupendous miracle You did not linger to receive praise and adulation from an awestruck admiring crowd, but dispersed them immediately, got into the boat with Your disciples, and left the region to go to other places where You were needed. All successful Christian teachers, preachers, and leaders of the Church must this lesson in humility. It is a virtue of paramount importance in those who are called to serve and labor in Your vineyard.
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