Catholic Maronite Readings

Dear brothers, your faith recognizes this seed fallen into the earth that death has multiplied. Your faith recognizes it because it dwells in your hearts. No christian hesitates to believe what Christ said of himself. But when this seed died and multiplied, many seeds were scattered on the earth. Saint Laurence is one of them, and today we celebrate the day when he was sown. We see what a tremendous harvest has sprung up from all those seeds scattered over all the earth and the sight fills us with joy, provided only that we ourselves belong to God’s grain store, by his grace. For not everything that is harvested goes into the grain store. The same necessary and fruitful rain causes both good seed and straw to grow but we don’t store both of them in the barn. Now is the time for us to choose…Listen to me, you holy seed, for I have no doubt that it is here in abundance… Listen to me or, rather, listen to him in me who was first called a good seed. Do not love your life in this world. If you truly love yourselves do not thus love your life, and then you will save your life… “Whoever loves his life in this world will lose it.” It is the good seed who said that: the seed thrown into the ground who died that he might bear much fruit. Listen to him because as he speaks so has he done. He both teaches us and shows us the way by example. Christ wasn’t attached to the life of this world. He came into the world to be stripped of himself, to give his life and take it up again when he willed…He, the true man, is true God, a sinless man that he might take away the sin of the world, clothed with power so great that he could truly say: “I have power to lay down my life and power to take it up again. No one can take it from me; it is I who lay it down and I who take it up again” (Jn 10,18).
maronite readings – rosary,team

Mindful of the Lord’s saying: “by this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35), Christians cannot yearn for anything more ardently than to serve the men of the modern world with mounting generosity and success. Therefore, by holding faithfully to the Gospel and benefiting from its resources, by joining with every man who loves and practices justice, Christians have shouldered a gigantic task for fulfillment in this world, a task concerning which they must give a reckoning to Him who will judge every man on the last of days. Not everyone who cries, “Lord, Lord,” will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but those who do the Father’s will by taking a strong grip on the work at hand. Now, the Father wills that in all men we recognize Christ our brother and love Him effectively, in word and in deed. By thus giving witness to the truth, we will share with others the mystery of the heavenly Father’s love. As a consequence, men throughout the world will be aroused to a lively hope-the gift of the Holy Spirit-that some day at last they will be caught up in peace and utter happiness in that fatherland radiant with the glory of the Lord. Now to Him who is able to accomplish all things in a measure far beyond what we ask or conceive, in keeping with the power that is at work in us-to Him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, down through all the ages of time without end. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21).
maronite readings – rosary,team

Eternal Father, you desire that we should serve you according to your good pleasure, and you lead your servants by different means and diverse ways. Thus you show us that under no circumstances can we, or should we, judge a man’s intentions by what we perceive him to do outwardly… The soul that sees light in your light (Ps 36[35],10) rejoices to behold your varied ways, your countless paths in each individual. For, although they walk by different paths, they do not run any the less along the road of your ardent charity. Besides, if it were not for this then they would not really be pursuing your truth. Hence we see some who run the way of repentance established in corporal mortification; others on humility and the mortification of their own will; others on a living faith; others on works of mercy; and others who are full of love of neighbour, having set self aside. By seeing in this way the soul… grows bigger and obtains that supernatural light by which it discovers the measureless breadth of your goodness. How in touch with reality they are, those who perceive your will in all things! In every human action they pay heed to your will without judging that of creatures. They have understood well and taken to heart the teaching of your truth when it says: “Stop judging by appearances” (Jn 7,24). O eternal Truth, what is your teaching? By what path do you wish us to go to the Father? What is the way we ought to follow? I see no other road than that which you have paved with the true and solid virtues of your ardent charity. You, O eternal Word, have sprinkled it with your blood. This is indeed the way.
maronite readings – rosary,team

When the people sinned in the desert (Nm 21,5f.), Moses, who was a prophet, commanded the Israelites to mount a serpent on a cross, in other words to put sin to death… They had to look at a serpent because it was with serpents that the children of Israel had been struck as their punishment. And why with serpents? Because they had repeated our first parents’ action. Adam and Eve had both sinned by eating the fruit of the tree; the Israelites had also complained regarding a question of food. To move words of complaint because they lacked vegetables is the limit of complaining! This is what the psalm testifies: “they rebelled against God in the wasteland” (Ps 78[77],17). So, in Paradise too, the serpent was the source of complaining… In this way the children of Israel were to learn that the very same serpent that had plotted Adam’s death had brought death to them, too. And so Moses hung it on the pole so that, when they saw it, its likeness would lead them to remember the tree. For those who turned their eyes towards it were saved, not indeed by the serpent but in consequence of their conversion. They looked at the serpent and were reminded of their sin. Because they were bitten, they repented and, once again, were saved. Their conversion transformed the desert into a dwelling-place of God; through repentance the sinful people became an ecclesial assembly and, still better, worshipped the cross in spite of it.
maronite readings – rosary,team

[Saint Catherine heard God say to her:] When my only-begotten Son returned to me forty days after his resurrection, this bridge was raised high above the earth. For he left your company and ascended to heaven by the power of my divine nature to sit at his eternal Father’s right hand. On the day of his ascension the disciples were as good as dead because their hearts had been lifted up to heaven along with my Son, who is Wisdom. So the angel said to them: “Do not stay here, for he is seated at the Father’s right hand.” (Acts 1:11). (…) So first I made a bridge of my Son as he lived in your company. And though that living bridge has been taken from your sight, there remains the bridge way of his teaching which, as I told you, is held together by my power and my Son’s wisdom and the mercy of the Holy Spirit. My power gives the virtue of courage to those who follow this way. Wisdom gives them light to know the truth along the way. And the Holy Spirit gives them a love that uproots all sensual love from the soul and leaves only virtuous love. So now, as much as before, through his teaching as much as when he was among you, he is the way and truth and life – the way that is the bridge leading to the very height of heaven. This is what he meant when he said: “I came from the Father and I am returning to the Father,” and “I will come back to you” (cf. Jn 16:28 ; Jn 14:28). In other words: my Father sent me to you and made me your bridge so that you might escape from the river and be able to reach life.
maronite readings – rosary,team

If there is one characteristic topic that emerges from John’s writings, it is love… John, of course, is not the only author of Christian origin to speak of love. Since this is an essential constituent of Christianity, all the New Testament writers speak of it, although with different emphases. If we are now pausing to reflect on this subject in John, it is because he has outlined its principal features insistently and incisively. We therefore trust his words. One thing is certain: he does not provide an abstract, philosophical or even theological treatment of what love is. No, he is not a theoretician. True love, in fact, by its nature is never purely speculative but makes a direct, concrete and even verifiable reference to real persons. Well, John, as an Apostle and a friend of Jesus, makes us see what its components are, or rather, the phases of Christian love. The first concerns the very Source of love, which the Apostle identifies as God, arriving at the affirmation that “God is love” (1Jn 4,8; 16). John is the only New Testament author who gives us definitions of God. He says, for example, that “God is spirit” (Jn 4,24) or that “God is light” (1Jn 1,5). Here he proclaims with radiant insight that “God is love”. Take note: it is not merely asserted that “God loves”, or even less that “love is God”! In other words: John does not limit himself to describing the divine action but goes to its roots. Moreover, he does not intend to attribute a divine quality to a generic and even impersonal love. He does not rise from love to God, but turns directly to God to define his nature with the infinite dimension of love. By so doing, John wants to say that the essential constituent of God is love and hence, that all God’s activity is born from love and impressed with love: all that God does, he does out of love and with love, even if we are not always immediately able to understand that this is love, true love.
maronite readings – rosary,team