11 May
Sat 		6th Week of Easter
Acts 18:23-28
Ps. 47:2-3,8-9,10
Jn. 16:23b-28
How To Pray With Shalom
Home Page of Shalom
Index of This Month
 

To acknowledge Christ as the Son of God is to have the assurance of God's immense love for us. In this assurance is the promise: "ask and you will receive and so your joy will be complete." This joy that Christ refers to is the extent to which we enjoy the gifts God has for us in this world - may it be a beautiful sunrise, music, successes in life, realization that we are alive, making others happy, helping others to be free persons, listening to the Word of God and doing the little things in life with love.

Such joy was also experienced by Jesus Himself who felt and expressed the joy when He attended the wedding feast at Cana and worked His first miracle by changing the water into wine.

It is in reflecting on the joyful experiences we have that we can really enter into the joyful experiences of Jesus. Such joy will motivate us to greater zeal and love for others especially those who are deprived of this in their lives. This is what Apollos did in his energetic way in refuting the Jews in public and using his knowledge of the Scriptures to proclaim that Jesus Christ is the Lord and Saviour.

Thus the joy is ". . . the Father Himself loves you for loving me and believing me that I came from God". (Jn. 16:24).


Lord, help us to be grateful for the joy we experience and to bring this joy to others especially those who are deprived of it.

DAILY OFFERING
Eternal Father, I offer You everything I do this day; my thoughts, words, joys and sufferings. Grant that, vivified by the Holy Spirit and united to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, my life this day may be of service to You and to others. I also pray that all those preparing for marriage discover in Sacrament the source of Christ's grace for living a fithful and fruitful love. Amen.

PRAYING WITH THE CHURCH
INTENTION
That Christians may live their faith coherently and so be credible witnesses of the hope of the Gospel
Elaboration

- END -








P R A Y I N G    W I T H    T H E    C H U R C H    

INTENTION : That Christians may live their faith coherently and so be credible witnesses of the hope of the Gospel

That we may live a "coherent faith" that is a faith which produces the testimony of good works is the ecumenical intention of the Holy Father. In the Joint Declaration on the doctrine of justification signed between the Catholic Church and the World Lutheran Federation in 1999 it is stated that "only through grace, by means of faith in Christ and his salvific work, and not through any merit of ours, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit which renews our hearts, enabling us to perform and leading us to good works".

It has to be understood that no human effort is capable of buying salvation. It is fundamentally a gift of God for which we have a duty to respond and co-operate through "faith-in-action" or "practised faith".

Hence, the strengthening of one's inner faith through prayer and the sacraments will assist in the growth of charity which leads us to live the new commandment of love more fervently. Now is the time to look at charity in a new way. It is not a matter of doing the same thing in the same way. It is a time to seek and find new expressions of love for every human being. Then we become "credible witnesses of evangelical hope"



- END -