If you want to do something good, do it; and if you cannot do it, then resolve to do it, and you will have achieved the resolution even if you do not fulfill the action itself. Thus a habit,
whether good or bad, can gradually and spontaneously be overcome. If this were not the case, no criminals would ever be saved, whereas in fact not only have they been saved, but many have become conspicuous for their excellence. Think what a great gulf separates the criminal from the saint; yet resolution finally overcame habit - Peter of Damascus (Free
will is a kind of spiritual "muscle" that strengthens if we exercise it. How are you being called to grow in this manner?)
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1 John 4:19–5:4; Psalm 72:1-2, 14 and 15bc, 17 Luke 4:14-22 Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in him, returned to Galilee; and his reputation spread throughout the
countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised him.
He came to Nazara, where he had been brought up, and went into the synagogue on the sabbath day as he usually did. He stood up to read and they handed him the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Unrolling the scroll he found the place where it is written:
The spirit of the Lord has been given to me,
for he has anointed me.
He has sent me to bring the good news to the poor,
to proclaim liberty to captives
and to the blind new sight,
to set the downtrodden free,
to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour.
He then rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the assistant and sat down. And all eyes in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to speak to them, ‘This text is being fulfilled today even as you listen.’ And he won the approval of all, and they were astonished by the gracious words that came from his lips.
Reflection on the Scriptures
Throughout the economy or plan of salvation, we see that God's love is unconditional and encompassing, extending especially to the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. As the Gospel text of the day reminds
us, the exemplification of this love culminated in Jesus, whose mission was to bring hope and liberation to those most in need. His birth in a poor stable, which we just celebrated, his public life lived not only as a poor but also with and for the poor, his teachings and healings aimed at uplifting the marginalized, his death on a cross as a victim of political rivalry, and his burial in an abandoned tomb remind us that true love is action—it is feeding the hungry, comforting the sorrowful,
advocating for justice, and extending compassion through one’s whole life and work. To love God is to mirror this love to others, particularly those who are vulnerable, forgotten, and different from us. This is why God’s commandments are not burdensome but life-giving. By loving our neighbors, we not only fulfill God’s will but also experience the
joy and freedom of living in harmony with ourselves, with each other, with creation, and ultimately with God Himself. Hence, our faith in God is emancipating, helping us conquer the world and overcome its narrow ways, transforming it into a place of hope, compassion, and love. by Rashmi Fernando, S.J.
The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus, by James Arraj
https://innerexplorations.com/catchtheomor/resurrecion.htm Inner Growth Publications, 2007.
Chapter 4: The Resurrection of Jesus The Metaphysical Nature of Matter This new view of radical or substantial change can open the door for us to understand the nature of matter. The most striking thing about the concrete things we encounter is precisely the fact that they can undergo
this radical or substantial change. They can actually lose their being and become something else. So Thomas called matter a substantial potency to substantial existence. Let’s try to unravel what he meant. In his mind existing things fall into two broad classes. In the first, the class of things we call material beings, we have beings with a low degree of intensity of existence. We could say that their essences do not have a firm grip on their existence. They can lose it and become
something else. Thus, they have a capacity to lose their existence, and that is what Thomas calls matter. The other major class of beings has a firmer grip on existence and cannot lose it. They are what Thomas calls spiritual beings. Then comes us. We are perhaps the strangest of beings because we straddle these two worlds. Our soul is a spiritual being, and once it is created, it can never lose its existence. Our bodies, on the other hand, are material, and can and do lose their existence and
disintegrate. And what we need to examine closely is the relationship between the body and the soul. Let’s start with the development of the human embryo. For Thomas the embryo at conception has what
he calls, following Aristotle, a vegetative soul. Next at a certain stage of development it receives an animal soul, and later a spiritual soul is infused by God. The question is what happens to the vegetative soul when the animal soul comes on the scene, or to the animal soul when the spiritual soul is infused. If we take an Aristotelian view of prime matter, then with the arrival of the animal soul the vegetative soul disappears, for the animal soul directly informs prime matter in place of
the vegetative soul, and the continuity between the two cannot be at the level of essence, or form, or soul, but in some mysterious way the level of prime matter, itself. With the advent of the spiritual soul it is the animal soul that disappears, and the spiritual soul that is directly informing prime matter.14 This theory of change is a mixture of
both essential as well as accidental aspects. First the essential. Thomas, in contrast to some of his contemporaries, insisted that the spiritual soul was the single form of a human being. He did this because the form is what receives and exercises existence, and thus gives unity to a being, and so insisting on the unicity of the human form was to his mind the way to safeguard the unity of our being. As human beings we are one being, not many. But this crucial point was embedded in an accidental
Aristotelian framework which imagined that the spiritual soul directly informed prime matter, and therefore excluded all other forms, or souls. But as we have been seeing, this cannot be true. There is no such thing as prime matter as it is usually conceived, and we can look at the whole issue from another perspective. While there can only be one dominant form which is something’s principle of being in action, it is entirely possible for one form to be taken up into a higher or more intensive
form. Thus in the case of the vegetative soul, when the animal soul arrives on the scene the vegetative soul does not disappear, but it loses its autonomy and becomes subordinate to the animal soul which is now the new principle of existence and action. If for Aristotle essences as the supreme principles of being excluded each other, for Thomas existence is elastic, and among material beings the lower can be taken up into the higher, and that, indeed, allows the evolution of the universe which grows in the direction of more complex and intense beings.
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