Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Last Sunday Gos­pel read­ing ended with the dis­cern­ing of dis­ciples and the cost of dis­ciple­ship (cf. Luke 9:57–62). In this Sunday read­ing, Jesus makes sev­enty-two of his dis­ciples exper­i­ence the pros and cons of dis­ciple­ship and of pro­claim­ing the Gos­pel. Though not indic­ated, but these sev­enty-two dis­ciples must have under­stood bet­ter Jesus’ words that “foxes have dens and the birds in the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). They must have also learnt…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion After the rev­el­a­tion of Jesus’ iden­tity as the Mes­si­ah of God; after Jesus’ explan­a­tion of the implic­a­tion of his being the anoin­ted One of God; and after list­ing the con­di­tions of being his dis­ciple (cf. Luke 9:18–24), Jesus heads to Jer­u­s­alem, the final des­tin­a­tion of his mis­sion and the locus (place) where his mis­sion will be con­sum­mated (cf. Luke 9:51). There­fore, with the sol­emn for­mula now it happened that as the days drew near for him to be taken up, he res­ol­utely turned his…

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Read­ing Time: 3 minutes Pre­amble God loves the entire Cre­ated Order that He takes care of the mater­i­al and spir­itu­al life of His entire cre­ation, espe­cially of human beings. Jesus recalled the atten­tion of the dis­ciples, when they wanted to bypass this divine dic­tate (Luke 9:11–17. Cf. also Mark 6:30–44). The dog­mat­ic theo­logy schol­ars can­not for­get the long heated debates con­cern­ing the nature of the con­sec­rated bread and wine – Con­sub­stan­ti­ation (also called impana­tion) and Tran­sub­stan­ti­ation. In as much as we appre­ci­ate the effort to provide a dog­mat­ic foundation…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Accord­ing to the litur­gic­al arrange­ment of the Cath­ol­ic Church, the cel­eb­ra­tion of the des­cent of the Holy Spir­it last Sunday marked the end of the Paschal peri­od and the begin­ning of the “Ordin­ary Time.” How­ever, the two Sundays after the Sunday of the Holy Spir­it are des­ig­nated as solem­nit­ies. Solem­nit­ies because they are spe­cial Sundays that call our atten­tion to cent­ral mys­ter­ies of the Cath­ol­ic faith. The Solem­nity of the Most Holy Trin­ity. This feast invites us to con­sider what we believe about God,…

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Read­ing Time: 2 minutes Intro­duc­tion Last week was very import­ant for Chris­ti­ans because it offered them the oppor­tun­ity to pre­pare adequately, for the com­mem­or­a­tion of the gift of the Holy Spir­it on the Apostles, on all believ­ers and what gen­er­ally, is termed the offi­cial birth of the Church. I will con­cen­trate my reflec­tion solely on Acts of the Apostles chapter two. The Paschal peri­od con­cludes with the today’s cel­eb­ra­tion – the des­cent of the Holy Spir­it. Cla­ri­fic­a­tion of Term and Idea Gen­er­ally, Chris­ti­ans refer to this Sunday as the “Pente­cost”…

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