Mary Of The Angelus Association

12.4.2010 MONDAY OF THE SECOND WEEK OF EASTER

MEDITATION based on the readings of today’s Mass

The readings can be found in your bible or missal

First Reading: Acts 4: 23-31

“As they prayed, the house where they were assembled rocked: they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to proclaim the word of God boldly.”

St. Luke continues his story of the early days of the church.  The struggles have always been there, the political intrigues against the church of God’s holy servant, Jesus. 

It continues today.  The power of the Holy Spirit will always be with us, as promised by Jesus.  Each age has problems and persecutions to be faced.  Like the Apostles, when we pray, be specific.  Bring to Jesus the exact problem and suggest an outcome, making it always subject to God’s will.  When we ask in faith, surrendering our will to God’s, our prayers will always be answered.

As St. Luke prays:  Lord, you allow these things to happen , “but only  to bring about the very things that you in your strength and wisdom had predetermined should happen”.   Jesus, we trust in you.

Response to the Psalm: “Happy are all who put their trust in the Lord”

Psalm 2: verses 1-9.

“Ask and I shall bequeath you the nations, put the ends of the earth in your possession.”

Gospel:  John Chapter 3: verses 1-8.

Jesus speaks to Nicodemus, one of the Pharisees, who came to Jesus under cover of night for fear of his peers.  Our Lord says “I tell you most solemnly, unless a man is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom of God”.  Nicodemus takes him literally, born again?  How can a grown man get back in his mother’s womb?  Our Lord then says; “Unless a man is born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Jesus is teaching Nicodemus and all of us about baptism.  St. Paul tells us in Romans 6: 4 “So by our baptism into his death, we were buried with him, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glorious power, we too should begin living a new life.”

Baptised with water and the Spirit?  These two aspects of the consecration of the Christian are seen as the “anointing” and the “seal”.  Refer to 2 Corinthians 1: 21.  St. Peter tells us in 1 Peter : 20 that  “ in Noah’s time only eight souls were saved by water.  It is the baptism corresponding to this water that saves you now.”