Grace to you!

A woman was uneasy reading Romans 6, where Saint Paul talks about believers being “slaves of righteousness” (vs. 18). Such a concept seems inappropriate she said, given the reality of the terrible memories of slavery and all sorts of slave labor in our world.
 
Honestly, I was uncomfortable with the concept myself. Years back, whenever we had bible study around such concepts, I felt unequipped to contribute. Nevertheless, God has a way of teaching us, to see in our unique ways what He is communicating to us through His Word.    
 
My first insight into a different understanding came through the reading of True Devotion to Mary by Louis Marie De Montfort. I highly recommend this book for those who wish to develop the kind of Maria spirituality that is solidly built on Christ himself in the most intimate way of a mother-child relationship. It’s not a fluffy read though, and some of the content may sound shocking, and may challenge you even more.  
 
I found that Saint Montfort took the idea of slavery of righteousness and called it holy slavery (slave of love) in which someone would be willing to offer oneself, one’s life and will to Jesus through Mary. The person does so, not out of compulsion, but willingly and intentionally, so that even when the person isn’t thinking about it, the merits of their good works, like sweet fragrances, are dispensed for many in need. There is much more to this idea than I can describe in this reflection. 
 
The most shocking of the discovery I made was to realize that one could as well be completely detached from one’s virtuous acts in such a way the person asks Mother Mary to be the one who is to dispose of them for the intention of the Son. This made matters worse for me. 
 
Then I started to read the lesser version of the same Marian spirituality, 33 Days to Morning Glory, by Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC. The book brings together four great examples of Marian spirituality, which are solidly Christ-centered, in dialogue with each other. They include the models of Saint Louis Marie de Montfort, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Saint Theresa of Calcutta and Pope Saint John Paul II. As I read this work, I started to gain more insight into the concept of “holy slavery.” 
 
I went back again to read Romans 6. Then I began to feel a different way concerning the text. I saw what Saint Paul wrote as “slaves of righteousness” as an inspiring word to be what I'm made to be: Glorify God and love my neighbor as well as myself as I’m loved by God. None of which makes me less or subjugates me like a slave or makes me a prisoner of sin. Actually, justification makes us free to be free. Sounds like a tautology (repetition) or a play on words, but it isn't. 
 
How free am I if I can’t live the ideal of my ultimate goal in life? How free am I if I can't live the life of one who has been set free? The grace of God gives me the inner strength to freely choose what is true, good and beautiful. I become so loyal to the cause of holiness like a bond-slave is loyal to his master. It is in the willful, unforced loyalty that this holy slavery lies. 
 
So, what the Lord has done for us is liberating if we realize we are free to live to the fullest what is expected of our nature as humans. The opposite is slavery to what doesn't align with our calling. Such sinful behaviors, or unfreedom as St. Ignatius of Loyola calls it, actually lead to lack of fulfillment and salvation. 
 
We may not need to travel too far to hear from addicts the pain it causes them not to become sober. If one is to be addicted, how about choose to be addicted to virtuous life. Such an addiction sounds liberating after all. Therefore, it isn’t an addiction but a chosen path of benediction. 
 
I pray we live for why we are here. “For freedom, Christ has set us free” (Gal 5:1), may we continue to celebrate it. Amen.
God love you. God bless you. 
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu  
 
[Thursday Week 29 A: Rom 6:19-23; Lk 12:49-53]
 
 

Grace to you!

From the Gospel of Luke chapter eleven, we read the beautiful dialogue between Jesus and a woman who was probably fascinated by his words. The woman raised her voice and said to Jesus, “‘blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’ But he [Jesus] said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” (Luke 11: 27-28).

Surely, Jesus was not dismissive of his mother. He was actually reaffirming what made his mother “Blessed”—hearing and keeping God’s word.

I would love to walk us through some insight into what faithfully hearing and keeping God’s word means, using the example of Mary. I will borrow from the tradition of Saint Pope John Paul II, from the homily he gave in Mexico City Cathedral on 26 January 1979.

The Pope said Mary’s fidelity to God showed in four ways, sort of one leading to the other. I would love for us to pay attention to them because they could help us in getting to the core of how to embrace God’s word, how to be faithful.

First is search. “Mary was faithful first of all when she began, lovingly, to seek the deep sense of God’s plan in her and for the world. Quomodo fiet? How shall this be?, she asked the Angel of the Annunciation” (see Luke 1:34).

We must search, and I would say thirst for God’s Word, God’s plan in our lives as the deer yearns for a flowing stream. It’s blessing to do so.

Second is reception and acceptance. According to the Pope, the how shall this be (quomodo fiet?) is “changed, on Mary’s lips, to a fiat: Let it be done, I am ready, I accept.” The pope says this stage is crucial because we have to understand we may not completely know how the word or plan of God would eventually play out in our lives. “…in God’s plan [there are] more areas of mystery than of clarity” and that however we may try, we will never succeed in understanding it completely.
​
Isn’t it true in your life that many times, you do not know how the will of God would work out? Yet the expectation is to trust that God will see you through. God never fails.
 
Third is consistency to live in accordance with what one believes. We have to adapt our life to God’s word. This comes with trails and temptations, but we have to be consistent. “But all faithfulness must pass the most exacting test, that of duration,” the pope says.
 
Fourth is constancy. The pope says, “It is easy to be consistent for a day or two. It is difficult and important to be consistent for one’s whole life. It is easy to be consistent in the hour of enthusiasm, it is difficult to be so in the hour of tribulation. And only a consistency that lasts throughout the whole of life can be called faithfulness. Mary’s ‘fiat’ in the Annunciation finds its fullness in the silent ‘fiat’ that she repeats at the foot of the Cross”
 
So, if you want to respond to Jesus’ invitation as to be blessed in the footsteps of Mary, follow these four steps of faithfulness—deeply desire God’s Word, God’s Will, accept it, be consistent in holding on to it and be constant to the end.
 
May God give us the grace to do hear God’s word and keep it. Amen.
 
God love you. God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu
 
[Saturday Week 27 Ordinary Time: Jl 4:12-21; Lk 11:27-28]
 
 
 
 

Grace to you,
 
I wish to share with you an excerpt from my book Word for a Wounded World about the Blessed Virgin Mary and her participation in the cross of Christ. The Church’s tradition speaks of the seven sorrows of Mary and the following reflection points to them. I hope you find this excerpt helpful in your moments of pain and suffering.
 
“Mel Gibson’s record-breaking movie, The Passion of the Christ, depicts Mary as the Sorrowful Mother, who accompanied the Son through the tortuous and torturing moments of the Via Dolorosa (the way of the cross). She was present, not only on the short distance from the house of Herod, through the stony Jerusalem streets to Golgotha, but was part of the Cross of Salvation events from the very moment the Child Jesus was presented in the temple, before Simeon and Anna, to the prophesied events of Good Friday.
 
During the presentation in the temple, Simeon prophesied: “This child is destined to be the rise and fall of many . . . and a sword will pierce your soul” (Luke 2:34). During the flight into Egypt, the mother of God, accompanied by her most chaste spouse, Joseph, started to live the sorrows of rejection and persecution.
 
Through the hidden life of Jesus, she nourished, loved and saw how the Infant Jesus grew to manhood. Later, during the hectic loss of the Child Jesus, Mary witnessed the dark night of the potential loss of her child.
 
The meeting of Mary and her Son on the Via Dolorosa was like a dagger, piercing her maternal heart of love, but she kept going. Mary was present at the Crucifixion, where she, the Mother of God, stood--Stabat Mater. Only grace and the certainty of God’s love for His Son could have held her up, as she bore a suffering beyond all telling.
 
Jesus would say to John, as if giving His beloved Mother away, “Son behold your mother; mother, behold your son.” At the foot of the Cross, Mary said her second ‘yes,’ in a desolation we cannot even imagine. She witnessed the sword piercing the Most Sacred Heart of her son—the only Begotten Son of God!
 
Mary would courageously hold her dead Son in her arms, as her heart broke, but her spirit remained steadfast. Michelangelo’s Pieta is a masterpiece that depicts the sorrows of the Blessed Lady holding the pierced Innocent Lamb of God in her hands.
 
At the burial of Jesus, Mary, fortified with grace, was also present. Mary was the first to lead her Son closer to His ultimate mission, the journey to Calvary, as that was why He came—to nail our sins to His cross in order for us to be healed by His wounds (Is. 3:5).
 
My friends, all our wounds, small and big, are in His great wounds! Let us remember this. Give your wounds to Jesus—He wants them.” (Maurice Nkem Emelu, Word for a Wounded World, vol. I, pp. 201 -202).
 
God love you. God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu
 
[Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, September 15]

Grace to you and Happy Birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary!
 
On this special day, may I share with you a poem I composed last year on the Birthday of Mary (September 8). 
 
The poem flowed from a deep love for Mary, the Immaculate Conception, the Mother of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To her intercession I attribute my self-awareness of God’s love and life in my poor soul. She is one of the pillars of my spiritual life, and the spiritual life of many of those I personally know who are deeply in love with Christ in the Trinity of Love. The poem is entitled, The Lady I Love So Much. 
 
As you read the poem, remember to present to Jesus the petitions so dear to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, namely conversion of sinners. The three secrets of Fatima, indeed, the messages of Mother Mary during the six consecutive Apparitions to Lucia, Francesco and Jacinta in May 13 to 13 October 1917, and the three preceding visions of the Angel, remind us of the urgency to pray and offer sacrifices for the conversion of sinners. We are also to do reparation for sins against the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
 
Pray this Angel Prayer which was revealed by the Angel of Portugal to the three children of Fatima:
 
O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifferences by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the conversion of poor sinners.
 
A day like this would be apt to say the rosary before the statue of Our Lady of Fatima or any statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. I love Our Lady of Grace statue too. Divine Graces abound on this Feast Day.
 
Pray for the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in the world and for the end to abortion and social structures of sin such as racism, discrimination and injustice.
 
Pray also for the safety of those in the Bahamas, Florida, etc., as the triple hurricanes—Irma, Jose and Katia—threaten lives and property. Continue to pray for the victims of the Harvey in Huston that they receive the support they need to rebuild.
 
Pray for the pope, the bishops and the clergy for the grace of apostolic fervor and holiness of life. Pray for married people for the grace of holy, joyful and sacrificial love for one another and fidelity in their marriage bonds.
 
Pray also for me today through Sunday as I give a keynote address on the Fruits of the Message of Fatima, as well as participate in a special EWTN Live discussion on the Message of Fatima with three other quests and host Marcus Grodi, at the EWTN Family Celebration in Worcester Massachusetts, U.S.A. 
 
Pray for families, the church of the home (the domestic church).
 
Pray! Pray!! Pray!!!
 
Click here to read the poem….
 
God love you. God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu 

Grace to you and Happy New Year!
 
Grateful for the gift of life and the New Year. My prayer is that this New Year will be more blessed than the previous one. Amen.
 
If I may ask, what are your plans for this New Year? Any New Year resolutions? 
 
Honestly, I gave up on making New Year resolutions some time ago. They don’t work for me. Those decisions not to eat this or eat that, to achieve this or achieve that, have simply not worked for me.
 
I have some friends, though, who operate by New Year resolutions. It keeps them focused and works for them. People are different. Beauty of creation. Blessings of Diversity. Thank God the world isn’t a monotone. Follow what works for you.
 
What works for me is seeing my life as a continuum. I try, by the grace of God, to make adjustments throughout the course of the New Year. It saves me from unnecessary anxiety and frustrations.
 
Permit me to share one specific spiritual tip that works for me. My apologies if it sounds personal and somewhat too religious. It’s been very helpful to me and I would want to share, hoping you will be blessed by my experience. Feel free to share yours too. My online comment box or the email is open for such sharing and feedback. 
 
Wouldn’t it be nice if we shared our success stories, as well as our failures, so others may learn something which could help them too? There is joy in sharing. Empowerment also! Recall that biblical text which encourages sharing words of our testimony as one of the tools for victory (see Revelation 12:11).
 
What has been very helpful to me during the New Year is dedicating my entire year to the Lord and I do so through Mary the Mother of God.
 
“What?” some may ask, “Mary, the Mother of God? How can a human being be called God’s mom? Nonsense!”
 
Well, I would answer this in a very simple way and then get back to my story. I presume my audience at least believes Jesus is God. If not, it would need a longer explanation that can’t be covered in today’s reflection. Some thoughts re the identify of Jesus will follow tomorrow
 
In our Christian tradition (and this is accepted by virtually all Christian traditions), Mary is the biological mother of Jesus. This is historical truth. For Christians, Jesus is God, the second Person of the Trinity (three persons in one God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). So, if Mary is the Mother of Jesus who is God, it follows logically and theologically, and one can confidently say, that Mary is the Mother of Jesus who is God. Hence, Mary is the Mother of God. This is the simplest way to explain this doctrine, which was defined over one thousand five hundred years ago (AD 431) at the Council of Ephesus.
 
During that Council, the Church Fathers reemphasized the core truth already defined at the Council of Nicaea AD 325 and the First Council of Constantinople in 381AD. Namely, that Jesus is God and not less equal with God, what was called “Christological controversy (controversy related to the identity and the two natures, human and divine, of the Christ). The Fathers also discussed the place of the birth of Jesus and the role of Mary in that birth.
 
A Catholic prelate, Nestorius, who was the patriarch of Constantinople, claimed that Mary is the Mother of Christ (Christotokos, meaning bearer of Christ). He meant that Mary gave birth to the human nature of the Christ only. By so doing, he and his followers dichotomized the person of the Child Jesus born by Mary, between the human (born by Mary) and the divine (which was not born by Mary).
 
The Church, led by theologians like Saint Cyril of Alexandria saw the danger in this Nestorian position (called in history as Nestorian heresy). It meant dividing the identity of Christ and that the Incarnation through Mary was simply the birth of the human Christ and not the two natures in one person. The Church rejected this as a heresy and upheld to the Gospel truth that Mary conceived and gave birth to Jesus, fully God and fully man. Hence, the place of Mary as God-bearer (Theotokos, also translated as Mother of God) was defined as a dogma.
 
Let’s return to how I shape my New Year. I dedicate my New Year to Jesus through Mary. I do this by long hours of prayers the day before, and a few more days after the New Year. 
 
On the New Year, I celebrate the Mass of Mary the Mother of God, during which I connect with the universal Church in asking for the intercession of Mary, the Mother of God, the one that interceded for those who had no wine. We know that Jesus answered her request bringing about the first miracle Jesus ever performed, when it wasn’t his time to go public yet (see John 2). I ask Mary to play that role for me as well throughout the course of the year. She does.
 
It’s brilliant for the Catholic Church to set January 1 as a special feast of Mary. Beginning the year with Jesus Christ born of the Blessed Virgin Mary is having the real deal. Liturgical spirituality (spirituality built on the liturgical life of the Church) is a blessing. It’s rich. 
 
Praying with Mary as she intercedes to her Son on our behalf is a special honor for those who realize what blessings the Mother of the Lord is to believers, the beloved disciples. I tell you, my year is blessed exceedingly by so doing.
 
Hence, in addition to your New Year resolutions, I would recommend dedicating your New Year to God. Doing so through the intercessions of the greatest Saint, Mary the Mother of our Lord, would be an excellent idea.
 
We do not know what the year holds. Only God knows. So, dedicating every second, minute, hour, week and month of the year to God and asking God to lead us to the where and the how of the best things for our blessings, salvation and God’s glory is a wonderful practice. God never fails.
 
Hand the year over to God and God will take care of it.
 
God love you. God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu
 

 

Grace to you and Merry Christmas!
 
The other day, I met a young boy from a broken family. He was very distraught. I lacked words to reassure him of love, love of God and love of neighbor. Love of family was, indeed, for him, an illusion since, according to him; “no one has ever showed me love.” His mom is an addict; his dad is nowhere to be found in his life. He has no place to call home. 
 
If you wouldn’t mind, join me to pray for this young boy and many like him so the good Lord will intervene, through people, to restore their confidence, heal them and make them feel loved.
 
I would love for us to reflect on the blessings of the family and to do so, may we use the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph as our point of reference. I understand you may be wondering, but that is like using the perfect to talk about the imperfect. I agree. However, since we have to begin from somewhere, and since today (in the Church) is a special feast day of the Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we could as well use them as our point of reference.
 
The family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is called a Holy Family, because at the center of that family is Jesus. The child, the Holy Child, and ultimately, whom we Christians believe is God who is Holy, unites that family.  Holiness is not so much an attribute of God as it is who God is.  God is holy and everything God does is holy. Every home God makes a home is holy. Thus, because Jesus is in the family of Joseph and Mary, we say the family is holy. This is as simple as it sounds.
 
Hence, if you want to have a holy family, let Jesus, who is God, be at the center of your family.  Make the child Jesus, whose birthday we celebrate, inspire and lead your family. Make him the center, the “author and perfecter…” (Hebrew 12:2).
 
Similarly, for the fact that Jesus was the identity of holiness in the Holy Family of Joseph and Mary, doesn’t mean they didn’t face the usual ups and downs of family life. Actually, from the start of the family of Nazareth, there were a lot of hurdles. Mary was faced with the challenge of having or not having a child who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. She must have felt like a simple girl (though she was espoused), having to deal with an unexpected pregnancy. She didn’t abort the baby, granting us the gift we celebrate at Christmas. How about dealing with the public who would be wondering, “Is she a harlot?” or the gossip, the name-calling and the uncertainties concerning the unusual pregnancy?
 
Consider Joseph to whom Mary was espoused. The challenge of managing the domestic crises related to Mary’s pregnancy, a pregnancy he was not responsible for; being a foster father of Jesus, providing food for the mom and the child when he was not ready for it, being driven away from his father’s land because Herod wanted to kill the child, and living like an immigrant, actually a refugee, in a foreign land. How about the reality of going unnoticed, the man of the house literally being in the background, when most men would have loved to have all the attention? Joseph was all the way behind the scene protecting the child and the mom. The Holy Family faced the usual struggles of an average home, but they kept God at the center.
 
Consider the sorrows and the agonies connected with the child Jesus, plus the constant traits to his life. Economic difficulties with the poor family, in addition to the final hours of death when the Mother of Sorrows, Mary, stood and watched her innocent child, Jesus, crucified. In all these, the silence of the parents amidst moments of crises was remarkable. 
 
What I would suggest we take home today from the life of the Holy Family is the example of silence. If we were a little more silent, not hasty when crises come in the family, it would save us a lot of problems. This silence is a contemplative silence, a silence that keeps us focused and centered in Jesus, who is God within our family and his domestic church, where he instills in our hearts, especially during those turbulent moments – Peace.
 
May there be peace and healing for broken or breaking homes. Love for those who feel unloved. Amen.
 
God bless our families.
 
God love you.  God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu 

Grace to you!

May I introduce today’s reflection with a popular bible story: Fascinated by Jesus’ words and actions, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to Jesus, “‘Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!’ But he [Jesus] said, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!’” (Luke 11: 27-28).

Has there been a time you deeply reflected on this text?

Surely, Jesus was not dismissive of his mother. He was actually reaffirming what made his mother “Blessed” – hearing and keeping God’s word.

I would love to walk us through some insight into what faithfully hearing and keeping God’s word means, using the example of Mary. I will borrow from the tradition of Saint Pope John Paul II, from the homily he gave in Mexico City Cathedral on 26 January 1979.
The Pope said Mary’s fidelity to God manifested in four ways, sort of one leading to the other. I would love for us to pay attention to them because they could help us in getting to the core of how to embrace God’s word, how to be faithful.

First is search. “Mary was faithful first of all when she began, lovingly, to seek the deep sense of God’s plan in her and for the world. Quomodo fiet? How shall this be?, she asked the Angel of the Annunciation” (see Luke 1:34).

We must search, and I would say thirst for God’s Word, God’s plan in our lives as the deer yearns for a flowing stream. It’s blessing to do so.

Second is reception and acceptance. According to the Pope, the how shall this be (quomodo fiet?) is “changed, on Mary’s lips, to a fiat: Let it be done, I am ready, I accept.” The pope says this stage is crucial because we have to understand we may not completely know how the word or plan of God would eventually play out in our lives. “…in God’s plan [there are] more areas of mystery than of clarity” and that however we may try, we will never succeed in understanding it completely.
​
Isn’t it true in your life that many times, you do not know how the will of God would work out? Yet the expectation is to trust that God will see you through. God never fails.
 
Third is consistency to live in accordance with what one believes. We have to adapt our life to God’s word. This comes with trails and temptations, but we have to be consistent. “But all faithfulness must pass the most exacting test, that of duration,” the pope says.
 
Fourth is constancy. The pope says, “It is easy to be consistent for a day or two. It is difficult and important to be consistent for one’s whole life. It is easy to be consistent in the hour of enthusiasm, it is difficult to be so in the hour of tribulation. And only a consistency that lasts throughout the whole of life can be called faithfulness. Mary’s ‘fiat’ in the Annunciation finds its fullness in the silent ‘fiat’ that she repeats at the foot of the Cross”
 
So, if you want to respond to Jesus’s invitation as to be blessed in the footsteps of Mary, follow these four steps of faithfulness – deeply desire God’s Word, God’s Will, accept it, be consistent in holding on to it and be constant to the end. How about that?
 
May God give us the grace to do so. Amen.
 
God love you. God bless you.
 
Fr. Maurice Emelu