Preparing the Reign - Learn to Empower

THE WORD IN ADVENT - Second week Wednesday

December 13, 2023 - Isaiah 40: 25-31; Matthew 11: 28-30

How do we prepare the Reign? By learning to empower, by learning to spot the absolute source of empowerment, the Lord himself. Preparing the Reign consists of empowering persons, in their state of confusion and discouragement, in their drooping state of mind, in their lowest moments of life. God has repeatedly revealed Godself, as  the one who strengthens the weak. Look at the way God took sides according to the pages of the Old Testament, the same continues with Jesus.

Come to me all you who labour and are overburdened, calls Jesus to give them rest, the proportionate yoke, and the salvific burden. Jesus never said I shall give you money and prosperity and wellbeing, in the sense of how some preachers of the 'prosperity gospel' today claim and allure. Let us not exaggerate - neither a negative gloom nor an all positive picturesque situation we have in our daily life. Each one has his or her share of burden, the right proportionate yoke and we cannot negate it. If we cannot negate, it means each of us needs a strengthening, an empowerment. Hence the invitation today: learn to Empower.

To learn to empower, first and foremost, I need to learn to be empowered. 'Come', the Lord calls - do we hear that call? do we heed that call? do we let ourselves be empowered by the Lord and Shepherd? That is a prerequisite for us to learn to empower. To experience the empowerment of the Lord, to identify the unfailing source of empowerment in the Lord and to develop a ready reaching out to God when in need of empowerment are essential traits in which we need to grow, before we learn to empower. 

To learn to empower means that we represent the loving Shepherd to the other. It is a call to each and everyone, and that is the key to the Reign. There is a mutual empowerment required and when that happens that we empower each other, the Reign of God is being prepared. Empowerment here is not any false promise, the Lord does not give any. It is not any exaggeration of great prowess. It is all about gentleness and humility, a restful replenishment of our spirits. We really do need to learn this from the Lord - in fact the Lord has that invitation too: learn from me.

To learn to empower is to recognise the constant source of empowerment that the Lord is and to become ourselves in anyway we can, source of empowerment to everyone around, that growing together stronger and firmer, we can prepare the Reign. 

Preparing the Reign - Learn to Speak

THE WORD IN ADVENT - Second week Tuesday

December 12, 2023 -  Isaiah 40: 1-11; Matthew 18: 12-14

How do we prepare the Reign? By learning to speak, by learning to speak to the hearts, by learning to speak as the Lord wants. Console my people, speak to their hearts, says the Lord in the Word today. That is what it means to prepare the Reign. Preparing the Reign is preparing the ground and those who are around. How else can we do it, but by SPEAKING the right thing, at the right time and in the right manner?

We reflected on learning to see, yesterday. And it is not enough to see, it is important to make the others see what we see - how can we do it? By speaking to them. Consoling, speaking to the heart, directing, seeking, finding, guiding, leading - these are the imageries that are given in the Word today. All of them amount to that one learning that the Lord wishes from us - that we learn to speak. 

That we learn to speak - what the Lord wants to speak. When we speak, we need to speak the good news, what the Lord wants to say, life giving words, words that build up, words that infuse life and hope. That is learning to speak. When we speak such words of hope and strength, we prepare the Reign in the hearts of people, in the situations we live in and in the communities we form part of. 

That we learn to speak - how the Lord wants us to speak. That we speak in a consoling manner, that we speak in a way that people will be led to God, in a way that will bring back the straying not send a few more astray, in a way that will making things straight, in a manner that will faciliate union and love, in a way that will create a situation of seeing and praising God for what God has done to us and keeps doing to us. That is the presence of the Reign. 

That we learn to speak the Lord, that we proclaim the Lord incessantly - not merely by our words but by our whole selves and our very lives. Shout, Cry, Announce, Proclain - "here is your God" says the first reading. We are called to speak God, whisper God, proclaim God, announce God, share God to the world. The natural prerequisite is that we should possess God! Speaking not from the emptiness, but from the fullness, from the heart that is full of God. 

Let us learn to speak, speak what the Lord wants to speak and in the way the Lord wants us to speak. Above all, let us speak God to all, that way we shall be every day, in every way, preparing the Reign.