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raise and glory to you, O God our Father for this blessed Monday as we go halfway through March, a year after the start of the longest lockdown due to COVID-19 pandemic.
Once again, we face the threats of a surge of infections after we have been unmindful that the corona virus is still among us as it comes close to our homes, infecting our family and friends with some of them now in serious condition.
We have forgotten, O Lord, that a new and better world always begins in us, when everyone changes one’s attitudes and ways of living as we continue to hold on to your promise of creating “new heavens and a new earth” (Is. 65:17).
That promise has started to be fulfilled in the coming of your Son Jesus Christ but unfortunately, until now many of us still refuse to believe in him, to live in him as we still seek signs from him like the people of his time.
Give us that same firm faith of the royal official from Capernaum who had come to Jesus in Cana, Galilee “and asked him to come down and heal his son, who was near death” (Jn.4:47).
Jesus said to him, “You may go; your son will live.” The man believed what Jesus said to him and left. while the man was on his way back, his slaves met him and told him that his boy would live. He asked them when he began to recover. They told him, “The fever left him yesterday, about one in the afternoon.” The father realized that just at that time Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live,” and he and his whole household came to believe.
John 4:50-53
So many times in life, O Lord, our faith do not match our lives. We say we believe in you only with our lips, or simply as an expression out of habit and routine. We never dare to truly believe by living out our faith, testing our faith like that royal official who was not only relieved and overjoyed when Jesus told him to go home because his son will live; he still enquired his servants who have met him along the way when exactly his son recovered from fever to confirm the faith he had placed in the words of Jesus.
Like that royal official, give us the courage to dare examine our selves, to look into the many darkness within us like fears, guilt, and anxieties mostly caused by our past sins.
Let Jesus our light dispel the many darkness within us, dear Father, so we may vibrantly live our faith in you so that your promised new heavens and a new earth begin right within us. Amen.
