Category: Bible Reading & Meditation

THE GOSPEL OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

“I have no one with me but Luke.” —2 Timothy 4:11 St. Luke never saw or heard Jesus, but he knew things about Him that even Jesus’ closest followers had not realized. This motivated Luke to write his Gospel and its sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. Luke epitomizes Jesus’ statement: “Blest are they who have not seen and have believed” (Jn 20:29). Although Luke had not seen Jesus, he knew Jesus more deeply than many of those who had walked and talked with Jesus (see 1 Pt 1:8). The Holy Spirit gave Luke many special insights into the person...

WAIT IN JOYFUL HOPE

“My soul trusts in His word. My soul waits for the Lord.” —Psalm 130:5-6 When I was younger, waiting used to be for me like chalk squeaking on a chalkboard. My prayer often went like this: “Lord, I want this so bad, this conversion, this vocation. It’s not a selfish thing I’m waiting for; You Yourself have put it on my heart, Lord. Hope deferred is making my heart sick (Prv 13:12), and still it hasn’t happened…” Gradually, I Iearned that waiting for the Lord, if done in a spirit of “waiting with” the Lord, grows into a time of...

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

“Do you suppose…that you will escape [God’s] judgment?” —Romans 2:3 If we sin and are too stubborn to repent, we are storing up wrath for Judgment Day (Rm 2:4-6). This wrath includes fury, affliction, and distress (Rm 2:8-9). Yet to those who have repented and totally given their lives to the Lord, to “those who strive for glory, honor, and immortality by patiently doing right” (Rm 2:7), the Lord gives eternal life (Rm 2:7). Eternal life includes “glory, honor, and peace” (Rm 2:10). Although we are so small in the universe and our time on earth is so short, our...

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against the irreligious and perverse spirit of men who, in this perversity of theirs, hinder the truth.” —Romans 1:18 Our society can deteriorate so much that many people “are filled with every kind of wickedness: maliciousness, greed, ill will” (Rm 1:29). We can get to the point that our society is the closest thing to “hell on earth.” This extremity of evil is preceded by “disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and the men gave up natural intercourse with women and burned with lust for one another. Men...

SOMETHING GREATER (LK 11:32)

“The Lord has made His salvation known.” —Psalm 98:2 God can work through us or despite us. Certainly, He would prefer to work through us. However, lest we think that we are irreplaceable, the Church holds up Jonah as a sign for us (Lk 11:29). The fruit which God produced through Jonah was remarkable, for an entire city repented and turned to the Lord (Jon 3:10). But first Jonah had to spend three days “buried” inside a great fish (Jon 2:1). Then on the third day, Jonah received a new life, a foreshadowing of Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead on...