Revelation 22:1-7 / Luke 21:34-36
There will be no more night: The Lord God shall be their light.
The Kwa Noi prison camp was a living hell for British and American soldiers in World War 11. Then one day a couple of prisoners organized Bible study groups. The camp underwent a dramatic change. One soldier recalls the change this way. He was hobbling back to his shack one night, after a late discussion session. Suddenly he heard a group of men singing "Jerusalem the Golden." The soldier says: "The words of that grand old hymn . . . made the darkness seem friendly. . . . The difference between this joyful sound and the joyless stillness of months past was the difference between life and death."
It is this kind of difference that today's reading talks about.
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How are we working to bring about the promised new heaven and new earth?
'The lord God will be their light, and they will rule as kings forever and ever." Revelation 22:5
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The book of Revelation gives us today an optimistic vision of the future: the river of life leads to the tree of life. It is God and the Lamb of God that give us a wonderfully fertile and lasting life.
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It is a general medical opinion that a lot of diseases like heart-attack, stroke, high-blood pressure and diabetes can be prevented and controlled. It just requires us to be disciplined in our diet and exercise routines. But when it comes to preventive measures, we don't usually see the concrete benefits of our vigilance. Hence we slacken, and we say that another piece of fatty meat or missing another day of exercise won't do much harm.
Or we might even throw caution to the wind and say: let's enjoy now and suffer later.
Yet very often, it is while lying on the hospital bed in pain that we start regretting not taking care of our health and our body.
Similarly neither do we want to spend eternity in regret.
What Jesus is asking of us is to be alert and to be with Him in prayer and to have confidence in what He had promised us.
Jesus had promised us eternity with Him. It is by spending every moment with Jesus in our hearts that we will be prepared for eternity with Him.
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Still, the gospel warns us. We may not choose the easy way of indifference or evil. We shall have to give an account to the Son of Man. We have to be watchful, so that we can stand before him with confidence. But our hope is great. We are a people of hope.
Let us pray:
Our saving God, long ago you sent your Son Jesus among us, but we have been too little aware of his presence and we hide him from others. Wake us up, make us recognize him, that he may be the light of our lives and that we may eagerly lead people to him. May he build up among us and with us a world and a kingdom of peace and love where we serve you in one another, as we move forward in hope to your home of endless joy and rest. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
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Having finished high school at sixteen, frail James, fourth son of a devout peasant family, joined the seminary of Alba. On the midnight of 31 December 1900, the night that divided the two centuries, as he prayed, long and fervently, before the Blessed Sacrament in the Cathedral of Alba, a special light came from the monstrance and “he felt deeply obliged to prepare himself to do something for the Lord and for the people of the new century.” That “something” translated itself into the apostolate of the “good press” as he termed it, at a time when the Church looked upon the media hostilely in matters associated with the Gospel.
Ordained priest in 1907, the Lord willed and guided James to use the media of social communications to spread the Gospel in the spirit of Paul the Apostle. In 1914, he laid the foundation of the Society of St Paul by opening a press training school in Alba. In 1915, he founded the Daughters of St Paul with the same mission. A man of vision, he started the Union of Lay Pauline Co-operators in 1917, giving lay involvement in the Pauline apostolate of the media due importance. Reading the signs of the times, he went on to found seven other Institutes, the ten collectively making up what is called the Pauline Family, the ideal of personal holiness and the mission of giving to the world ‘Jesus Master, the Way, the Truth and the Life’ being its source of unity and animation. He was beatified in 2003.
