by Prince Mathew
Preface for Meditation:
When mankind was estranged from him by disobedience, God our Savior made a plan
for raising us from our fall and restoring us to friendship with himself.
According to this plan Christ came in the flesh, he showed us the gospel way of
life, he suffered, died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He did
this so that we could be saved by imitation of him, and recover our original
status as sons of God by adoption.
To attain holiness, then, we must not only pattern our lives on Christ's by
being gentle, humble and patient, we must also imitate him in his death. Taking
Christ for his model, St. Paul said that he wanted to become like him in his
death in the hope that he too would be raised from death to life.
We imitate Christ's death by being buried with him in baptism. If we ask what
this kind of burial means and what benefit we may hope to derive from it, it
means first of all making a complete break with our former way of life. In other
words, we have to begin a new life, and we cannot do so until our previous life
has been brought to an end. When runners reach the turning point on a
racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite
direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives there must
be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of
another.
Our descent into hell takes place when we imitate the burial of Christ by our
baptism. The bodies of the baptized are in a sense buried in the water as a
symbol of their renunciation of sins of their unregenerate nature. Baptism
cleanses the soul from the pollution of worldly thoughts and inclinations: You
will wash me, says the psalmist, and I shall be wither than snow. We receive
this saving baptism only once because there was only one death and one
resurrection for the salvation of the world, and baptism is its symbol.
Bible Reading Passages:
Fourth Saturday of The Holy Lent
* Genesis 18: 1-15
* II Samuel 9: 1-8
Holy Qurbana
* Acts 16:8-15
* I Corinthians 9: 14-27
* St. Luke 9:10-17
Bible Verse of the Day:
"Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave
thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to set before the
people." St. Luke 9:16
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