Today is Great and Holy Saturday, and we sing our resurrectional hymn: “CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD! He trampled down death by death, and by His Resurrection, He granted life unto us.”
Today is a day for new beginnings! The good news of our Lord’s glorious Resurrection offers each of us an opportunity to see life from a fundamentally new perspective and begin life with a fresh and new start!
In the Gospel of Matthew 26:6-16, we see the unknown woman’s salvation contrasted with the chosen disciple’s tragic fall. The woman offered her precious gift to the Lord Jesus and was saved through her repentance, while the chosen apostle betrayed Christ for only thirty pieces of silver and, instead of repenting, took his own life. One received the inheritance of the Kingdom, while the other was condemned.
According to the Gospel, the apostles (possibly including the money-loving Judas) criticized the woman for wasting the precious oil by anointing Jesus; they suggested that the oil could have …
“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten young women took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those young women got up and trimmed their lamps. The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps …
In St. Matthew’s account, Jesus, after spending the night in Bethany, returns to Jerusalem in the morning and feels hungry. On the way, he saw a fig tree and approached it but found nothing but leaves on it. Jesus then said to the fig tree, “Henceforth bear no fruit forever,” and the tree withered immediately (Matthew 21:18-22).
This fig tree with leaves but no fruit symbolizes those who outwardly pretend to be pious and religious but do not have the fruit of good deeds. Nominal and formal Christianity is unworthy of the Kingdom of God. “Faith without works is dead,” the Apostle James says (James 2:26).
Our Lord Jesus Christ, like all believers of his time, went to Jerusalem as a pilgrim to participate in the Easter celebration. However, the difference was that he went as a “New Passover Lamb” to sacrifice his life on the Cross and free humanity from the captivity of sin through the shedding of his life-giving blood. He entered Jerusalem as the “Lamb of God,” who, through the sacrifice of his person, would tear the veil of sin between man and God and open the doors of the kingdom leading to God.
On Saturday before Palm Sunday, we commemorate the Resurrection of Lazarus, the seventh and last sign of our Lord Jesus Christ described in the Gospel of John (John 11:1-46).
Jesus Christ freed Lazarus, who had been dead for four days, from the grasp of death and restored him to life through the power of His word: “Lazarus, come out!” The same voice that brought the universe to life now called Lazarus from the darkness of death to the light of life.
For thousands of years, believers have looked up at the sky, waiting for God’s revelation. As the prophet Isaiah exclaimed, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” (Isaiah 64:1). This expectation and longing were first fulfilled with the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The heavens opened, and God’s Only Begotten Son took on human flesh, born in a manger in Bethlehem. We are told in the Gospels that people joined the angels above, singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom He favors!” (Luke 2:14). The One who split open the heavens and came down to earth on that silent night in Bethlehem also promised that in the last days, He will come again to judge the living and the dead (Matthew 24:36-44).
In his Gospel, St. Luke introduces the parable of the “Unjust Judge” by first telling us the meaning and context of the parable: we must always pray and not lose heart. The circumstances around which Jesus tells this parable and how St. Luke records it for his audience show that the parable is directly connected to their reality, where the audience had concerns regarding prayer. Our Lord Jesus Christ encourages His disciples to be steadfast in their prayer life and not to lose heart since perseverant and steadfast prayer is not an easy task.
Perhaps for some, it is easy to pray, but the difficulty arises when they do not receive the answers to their prayers within their desired timeframe. When we pray for the healing of a loved one and no positive results are observable, we experience frustration. When we plead to God to deliver us from hardships and then find ourselves in difficult circumstances, it may feel as though water is poured on the flames of our prayers, extinguishing that fire.
The Parable of the Dishonest Manager, as with other parables found in the Gospels, is about the Kingdom of God. Through the observable realities in the parable, Jesus reveals the invisible truths. Many have wondered as to why our Lord Jesus describes the dishonest manager as an example to emulate. It is important to note that our Lord Jesus does not praise the dishonesty but the shrewdness of the manager and his resourcefulness and approach to money. “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he …
The Parable of the Prodigal Son as a whole is considered to be a wise masterpiece amongst short stories. Only our Lord Jesus Christ, who knows the human heart, can describe so well the journey of repentance and the path to return to life. In this story, Christ describes the passions and desires of the young man who departs from his father’s home and finds himself in extreme poverty after throwing away his inheritance. He slips into desperation, living in squalor and eating from the pods of the pig…
