Grace as defined by CCC "is a supernatural gift of God, freely bestowed upon us for our sanctification and salvation". It is the help God gives us to respond to our vocation of becoming His adopted sons. It introduces us into the intimacy of the Trinitarian life.

 

Every day that we are still breathing is indeed another grace received from the Father for conversion and this is never to be taken for granted. This is the focus of the gospel reading of today. Jesus identified the fact that those who had died were not the worse sinners, yet unless the people repent, they will likewise perish like those mentioned and He would use the parable of the fig tree to corroborate His teaching; repentance is an urgent call which requires a prompt response. It is a call of grace and delay may be dangerous.

 

CCC 2002 says "God's free initiative demands man's free response, for God has created man in his image by conferring on him, along with freedom, the power to know him and love him. The soul only enters freely into the communion of love. God immediately touches and directly moved the heart of man. He has placed in man a longing for truth and goodness that only He can satisfy. The promises of "eternal life" respond, beyond all hope, to this desire: if at the end of your very good works..., you rested on the seventh day, it was to foretell by the voice of your book that at the end of our works, which are indeed "very good" since you have given them to us, we shall also rest in you on the Sabbath of eternal life."

 

The season of Lent is a season of grace, a special season God invites us to change our ways without delay. He calls us in a very special way to be the voice that would liberate His people from all kinds of oppression as He instructed Moses in the first reading "I have seen the miserable state of my people in Egypt. I have heard their appeal to be free of their slave-drivers. Yes, I am well aware of their sufferings. I mean to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land to a land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow, the home of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites." God is asking you and I to interfere in others' lives when we see them abused and discriminated against, when we see how tradition has enslaved the people to the extent that they are reduced to the level of cattle that may be bought, sold and abused.

 

Let us remain steadfast and not become complacent like the people of Israel. Our baptism in Christ Jesus is not enough to win us salvation, we have to make sure we are doing enough everyday to get rid of sin and move closer to the Father. Taking the grace and mercy of God for granted will only be to our own peril. We have every instruction and warning in the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness. Despite, all they had enjoyed, some still did not enter the Promised Land due to their infidelity. "These things all happened as warnings for us, not to have the wicked lusts for forbidden things that they had. You must never complain: some of them did, and they were killed by the Destroyer. All this happened to them as a warning, and it was written down to be a lesson for us who are living at the end of the age.

The man who thinks he is safe must be careful that he does not fall." Stay on your guard, cooperating always with the grace of God through prayers and conscious efforts.

 

Let us pray: Give us O Lord, the wisdom to know what to do and the courage to do them that in all we do and say, we may never take your grace in our lives for granted. Amen

 

Happy Sunday, Stay Safe and Stay Blessed.

 

Fr. Ibimiluyi Peter