Catholic Maronite Readings

Our Lord’s will is that we should rejoice and leap for joy when we are persecuted (Mt 5,12) because, when persecutions come, it is then that crowns of faith are given (cf. Jas 1,12), then that Christ’s soldiers prove themselves, then that the heavens open to their witnesses. We aren’t employed among God’s forces only to think of quiet, running away from service when the Teacher of humility, patience and suffering has himself provided the same service before us. What he taught he first of all carried out, and if he exhorts us to stand firm it is because he himself suffered before us and on our behalf. In order to take part in competitions in the stadium we exercise and train ourselves and think ourselves highly honoured if, before the eyes of the crowd, we have the happiness of receiving the prize. But here is a trial that is noble and stunning in another way, in which God watches us – we, his children – take part in the combat and himself gives us a heavenly crown (1Cor 9,25). The angels watch us, too, and Christ comes to our aid. So let us arm ourselves with all our strength; let us fight the good fight with brave hearts and solid faith.
maronite readings – rosary,team

Our Savior prayed to his Father on his disciples’ behalf : “That the love with which you have loved me may be them, and they in us.” And again: “That all may be one, as you Father in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us.” Then that perfect love of God, by which “he loved us first,” (1Jn 4,10) will have passed into our heart’s disposition upon the fulfillment of this prayer of the Lord… This will be the case when every love, every desire, effort, every undertaking, every thought of ours, everything that we live, that we speak, that we breathe, will be God, and when that unity which the Father now has with the Son and which the Son has with the Father will be carried over into our understanding and our mind, so that, just as he loves us with a sincere and pure and indissoluble love, we too may be joined to him with a perpetual and inseparable love and so united with him that whatever we breathe, whatever we understand, whatever we speak, may be God. In him we shall attain, I say, to that end… which the Lord longed to be fulfilled in us when he prayed: “That all may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they themselves may also be made perfect in unity.” And again: “Father, I wish that those whom you have given me may also be with me where I am.” “This, then, is the goal of the solitary, and this must be his whole intention: to deserve to possess the image of future blessedness in this body and as it were to begin to taste the pledge of that heavenly way of life and glory…
maronite readings – rosary,team

It is right for you to give glory in every way to Jesus Christ, who has given glory to you; you must be made holy in all things by being united in perfect obedience, in submission to the bishop and the presbyters. I am not giving you orders as if I were a person of importance. Even if I am a prisoner for the name of Christ, I am not yet made perfect in Jesus Christ. I am now beginning to be a disciple and I am speaking to you as my fellow-disciples. It s you who should be strenghtening me by your faith, your encouragement, your patience, your serenity. But since love will not allow me to be silent about you, I am taking the opportunity to urge you to be united in conformity with the mind of God. For Jesus Christ, our life, without whom we cannot live, is the mind of the Father, just as the bishops, appointed over the whole earth, are in conformity with the mind of Jesus Christ. It is fitting, therefore, that you should be in agreement with the mind of the bishop as in fact you are. Your excellent presbyters, who are a credit to God, are as suited to the bishop as strings to a harp. So in your harmony of mind and heart the song you sing is Jesus Christ. Every one of you should form a choir, so that, in harmony of sound througt harmony of hearts, and in unity taking the note from God, you may sing with one voice through Jesus Christ to the Father… It is then an advantge to you to live in perfect unity, so that all times you may share in God.

maronite readings – rosary,team

Brethren, who then is so profane and lacking in faith, who so insane by the fury of discord as either to believe that the unity of God, the garment of the Lord, the Church of Christ, can be torn asunder or to dare to do so? (Jn 19,24). He himself warns us in his Gospel, and teaches saying: “And there I shall be one flock and one shepherd” (Jn 10,16). And does anyone think that there can be either many shepherds or many flocks in one place? Likewise the Apostle Paul insinuating this same unity upon us beseeches and urges us in these words: “I beseech you, brethren,” he says, “by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing; that there be no dissensions among you but that you be perfectly united in the same mind and in the same judgement” (1Cor 1,10). And again he says: “Bearing with one another in love, careful to preserve the unity of the Spirit, in the bond peace” (Eph 4,2-3). Do you think that you can stand and live, withdrawing from the Church, and building for yourself other abodes and different dwellings?… When the sacrament of the Passover contains nothing else in the law of the Exodus than that the lamb, which is slain in the figure of Christ, be eaten in one house? God speaks, saying: “In one house it shall be eaten, you shall not carry the flesh outside the house” (Ex 12,46). The flesh of Christ and the holy of the Lord cannot be carried outside, and there is no other house for believers except the one Church. This house, this hospice of unanimity, the Holy Spirit designates and proclaims, when he says: “God who makes those of one mind to dwell in his house” (cf. Ps 86[87],7). In the house of God, in the Church of Christ, those of mind dwell; they persevere in peace and simplicity.
maronite readings – rosary,team

Along the ecumenical path to unity, pride of place certainly belongs to common prayer… If Christians, despite their divisions, can grow ever more united in common prayer around Christ, they will grow in the awareness of how little divides them in comparison to what unites them. If they meet more often and more regularly before Christ in prayer, they will be able to gain the courage to face all the painful human reality of their divisions, and they will find themselves together once more in that community of the Church which Christ constantly builds up in the Holy Spirit, in spite of all weaknesses and human limitations. Fellowship in prayer leads people to look at the Church and Christianity in a new way. It must not be forgotten in fact that the Lord prayed to the Father that his disciples might be one, so that their unity might bear witness to his mission and the world would believe that the Father had sent him. It can be said that the ecumenical movement in a certain sense was born out of the negative experience of each one of those who, in proclaiming the one Gospel, appealed to his own Church or Ecclesial Community. This was a contradiction which could not escape those who listened to the message of salvation and found in this fact an obstacle to acceptance of the Gospel.
Regrettably, this grave obstacle has not been overcome. It is true that we are not yet in full communion. And yet, despite our divisions, we are on the way towards full unity, that unity which marked the Apostolic Church at its birth and which we sincerely seek. Our common prayer, inspired by faith, is proof of this. In that prayer, we gather together in the name of Christ who is One. He is our unity.
maronite readings – rosary,team