1st Week of Advent
ST. FRANCIS XAVIER
1st Reading: Is 11:1-10
Gospel: Luke 10:21-24
Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and made them known to the little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. I have been given all things by my Father, so that no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and he to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
Then Jesus turned to his disciples and said to them privately, “Fortunate are you to see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings would have liked to see what you see but did not, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
With joy derived from the Holy Spirit Jesus praised his Father by way of a sincere spontaneous prayer. If we want our prayer of praise to be as sincere and spontaneous, we must desire the joy of the Spirit. This brand of joy is not the happiness most of us know. Happiness depends on happenings while joy comes deep down from the heart of a person open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
By “happenings” we refer to that series of mundane events offering fleeting satisfaction. Aside from the fact that this satisfaction is fleeting, this also leaves a vacuum in the heart – a vacuum that sucks into the heart just any mundane happening purporting to prolong the happiness. This results to a kind of fishing expedition that sets the heart on an unbridled experimentation with the world. Joy, not happiness, lifts the heart to the level of the divine.
To achieve joy, today’s Gospel suggests that we maintain the attitude of a child. As distinguished from childishness which turns us into spiritually spoiled brats, childlikeness endows us with the simplicity that makes us appreciative of God’s blessings. When one is appreciative of even the smallest blessings, he is like a child easier to please than an unimpressed adult with complicated standards and expectations. It is when we are childlike that our eyes see the secrets of the kingdom. This explains why Jesus exclaimed: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and made them known to the little ones.”
Seeing the secrets of the kingdom with the simplicity of the child moves us to thank God everyday, for we will never run out of reasons to give him thanks. Our prayers of thanksgiving will then be as sincere and spontaneous as Jesus’ prayer. –(Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., J.D., D.M.
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