The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II Friday in the Twenty-Eighth Week of Ordinary Time, Year I, 20 October 2023 Romans 4:1-8 ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> Luke 12:1-7
Our loving God and Father, help us learn St. Paul's beautiful teaching today about your righteousness and our justification - that, essentially, everything in this life is our relationship with you and with one another.
You justified and redeemed us in your Son Jesus whom you sent to restore that relationship with you broken by sin in Adam and Eve; to renew and make that relationship work, you made us new in Christ to make us worthy before you and with one another in your grace.
How wonderful as St. Paul explained that long before your Laws came, that relationship has always been there wondrously expressed most especially by Abraham in his deep faith in you; faith is a relationship which Abraham proved thrice to you: when he obeyed your command for him to leave his family and city to go to the land you would show him; when he believed even in his old age you would give him a son in his wife Sarah to become the father of all nations; and when Isaac was finally born as he grew up, Abraham willingly gave him up to you when you asked him to be offered. In all three instances, Abraham never sinned to you because he upheld and valued so much your relationship with him.
Help us, God, to be like Abraham in upholding and preserving most dearly this relationship with you and with one another we keep and nurture in faith.
For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due. But when one does not work, yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.
Romans 4:3-5
Forgive us, merciful Father, for being so proud, always proving our worth with all our works without realizing that you have done everything in our favor, that there is nothing we can do nor we may do for us to be saved in ourselves, by ourselves except to believe in you like Abraham; let us not be hypocrites like the Pharisees who do not realize that everything is revealed in you, including our thoughts; let us remember that sin is more than the evil acts we do but most of all, our lack of faith in you that we destroy our beautiful relationships with you and with one another. Amen.
