Thy Kingdom Come!

SPIRITUAL EXERCISES FOR RCMC- Michigan, January 2017

Third day
First Meditation- January 6th
St Mother Theresa of Calcutta- Pray for us! – Intense love does not measure. It just
gives!

“ The Incarnation Our Lord”

We are now starting the second week of spiritual exercises, and if we remember
what I explained to you in the directives he first day, this “week”, that for us will be 2
days, is to contemplate the LIFE OF CHRIST. To “conform the reformed”—the focus
of the second week is to reflect on the person and life of Christ so that we may freely
CHOOSE to love him and DECIDE to follow him more closely and faithfully. Now that
we have been “restored” by grace… we want to conform ourselves with Christ, we
want to be like him, have his heart.

Everything in this stage revolves around the PERSON OF CHRIST, the objective is
that we fall more in love with Him, with His word, with His life to the point that He
becomes the center and model of our own lives and the only motivation for our
surrender in love. We want to follow Him wherever He goes, so as to live with Him
in this earthly life and in heaven.

Our saint today will be Mother Theresa, she was just canonized 3 months ago and is
a saint almost all of us knew personally. We can ask her to be especially close to us
as we contemplate the humanity of Jesus, him becoming man, one of us, to save us.
Mother Theresa in a special is a testimony of being “another Jesus here on earth”.
We can surely say that she “incarnated Jesus” in her own life… She was a walking
Jesus… She was the light for a world that was full of darkness. The words that Christ
told her when he asked her to found the Missionaries of Charity where precisely:
“Come, come carry Me into the holes of the poor. Come be My light”. And we can also
surely say that she was able to see the Incarnate Christ in everyone that she
encountered, especially in those who where rejected, sick and abandoned: in the
poorest of the poor”. SHE WAS CHRIST FOR OTHERS AND SHE SAW CHRIST IN
OTHERS, treating them (all) as if they where Christ. She would talk about the Gospel
of the 5 fingers: “You-did-it-to-me”. And she LIVED that. She healed the wounds of a
leper (that was Christ), she feed the hungry (that was Christ), she attended her
sisters and wrote many letter (to people that she saw Christ)… In the rich and the
poor- she saw Christ!

Lets ask God this grace that He becomes incarnate in us, that we can also be His light
for others… and let us also see Christ in every person. It is a grace… To see him in
the people I love, is easy, but to see him in people that have hurt me, that I don’t get
along, that I don’t like… This is THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST… “ Love one another- As I
have loved you”
So how has God loved us?.... We will contemplate the Incarnation of Christ a mystery
that is incredible, mind blowing… ONLY THE MADNESS OF LOVE that God has for us
can do this!

Preparatory prayer: Lord Jesus, give me the GRACE to fall in love with you
passionately. Let me experience your personal and real love for me so that I can love
you with a pure heart. May all my intentions, desires and actions may be ordered to
serve you and give you the greatest glory so in that way I can build your Kingdom.

Fruit: To know Jesus, to enter into His heart and experience his radical and pure
love for me. Allow myself to wonder and be in AWE before the MYSTERY OF LOVE!
Let the words of St Paul speak to your heart “He loved me and gave himself FOR
ME”. He became man FOR ME…

Text:

1. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son, that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn
3,16)

We have been meditating on the covenant of love that God since the creation of the
world established with man… We saw how Adam and Eve broke this covenant by
sinning and how God, even I that moment made a promise of redemption (what we
called the protoevangelium- the first Gospel or “good news” in Gen 3,15 “I will put
enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, he shall
bruise your head and you shall bruise her his heal”-this is the first announcement of
the Messiah and Redeemer, of the battle between the serpent and the woman, and
the victory of he descendant of her- JESUS.)

Through the history of the Old Testament God will renew the covenants, after Adam,
with Noah, Abraham, Moses, David and in all of them the people of Israel failed…
They would break the covenant by idolatry, they will adore other god’s, and go far
away… God send prophets and give them the a law, but they started living it
superficially, by the “externals”, not interiorizing that law, not out of LOVE for their
God, out of fidelity of love because of the covenant of love, it was a burden, more
than a way to grow in freedom and in love… They where some faithful ones that
kept waiting for the Messiah in GREAT EXPECTATION.. their souls where in pain,
they where oppressed, without true freedom, the world of sin was all around. But
they kept the hope. God had sent prophets that spoke of a covenant that will
REUNITE man with His Creator:
- Hosea 2:19 “I will espouse you forever, I will espouse you in righteousness and
in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. I will espouse you in faithfulness and
you will know the Lord”. It will be a new and eternal marriage, that will allow
the bride to truly know the Lord
 - Jeremiah 31:31 “Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make
a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like
the covenant which I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to
bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke… But this is
the covenant that I will make… I will put my law within them, and I will be their
God, and they shall be my people… and they will all know me, from the least to
the greatest, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no
more”. A new covenant different than the Old, this will be a new law written
in the heart… the Lord will forgive all their sins and bring them to a
relationship with Him.
- Ezekiel 36:26 “A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within
you, and I will take out of your flesh your heart of stone and give you a heart
of flesh… And you shall be my people, and I will be your God”.

And what does God do? He fulfills HIS PROMISES…. It keeps repeating “and you
WILL KNOW THE LORD”… because Christ becomes INCARNATE… then I can know
HIM in a new way… and keeps repeating.. “they shall be my people and I will be their
God”… Is this LIFE OF COMMUNION, of INTIMATE union, the “marriage” of God with
us, by becoming one of us… He is mine, I am His…
GOD CONTINUES TO REACH OUT… SEE HOW GOOD GOD IS!!!
He sends his SON to REUNITE man with His creator, He sends Jesus that will
inaugurate the NEW COVENANT and will give His life for us…. He can’t give us
anything more… Is not a messenger, is not a prophet is GOD HIMSELF!

GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD… God so loved me! This is the love of the Father that
never abandons me. (Story of the father that rescues His son of the earthquake: “I
promised my son, no matter what, I will be there for you”) God is faithful to his
promises.

And by giving me Christ… He gives me all things… He is the fountain and treasure of
all good. Having Him, I have all. This is the gift of the Incarnation… God becoming
man. The gift of the Son… to each person, so that each one of us could say: Jesus is all
mine, his body is mine, his blood is mine, his life is mine, his sorrows are mine, his
death, his merits, there are all mine.

What love and mercy of God… All that God is he gives to me… He created the whole
world and put it at the service of man… and that was not enough… He decides TO
GIVE HIMSELF…

2. And the world became flesh, and dwelt among us (Jn 1,14)

He became flesh, assumed a human nature, became like us in all but sin. Now we can
see the face of God… GOD REVEALS HIMSELF IN CHRIST… We can see God!
Whatever humans can go, God is there. Whatever man can experience, God can also
feel… Christ meets me where I am at and I don’t have to look up to heaven and ask
“Where is God?”… He is HERE… He is dwelling among us!!
We can’t say that God does not relate with us… that he does not understand us…
because He does, with His own life, flesh, body and soul….

Christ becomes a MODEL of holiness that we can imitate… Is not a distant God that
we cant reach, it is Emmanuel-God with us… and lives as a simple man. He becomes
a baby, eats, walks, works hard, obeys, rejoices, teaches, etc.… He lives among the
poor and also deals with the rich, he heals, he prays. Christ suffers and dies, giving
meaning to his suffering and to ours. He conquers death to die no more. Being God,
He at the same time lives an ordinary life. In this way He teaches man how to live a
life of love and suffering in union with Him and His Father. He teaches man the path
to holiness so as to reach the ultimate goal inscribed in the heart of every human
person, which is happiness in heaven with him. “For we have not a high priest who
is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has
been tempted as we are, yet without sinning.” God by assuming human nature
elevated every human person to a dignity that cannot be compared. In this way man
can only be fulfilled and completed in Christ, the perfect man.

St Athanasius says, “God became man so that we may might become God”. With
Christ’s Incarnation we become partakers of DIVINE NATURE. God made us capable
of sharing in His own nature, in HIS OWN LIFE by giving us sanctifying grace and
allowing us to participate in the life of the Trinity. In a special way through the
Sacraments we enter in communion with God and we are transformed by the
supernatural virtues and gifts of the Holy Spirit. This makes the human person act
more and more in a God-like way. Christ comes to the world so that man can know
and live in a personal relationship with God.

Prayer:
My Jesus, thank you for coming to me, for reaching to me so I can find you. Help me
to contemplate and receive your love with gratitude and an open heart.