maronite readings

“May peace reign in your walls” (Ps 121[122],7). O Jerusalem, built as a city with compact unity” (v.3), peace in your strength, peace in your love! For your strength is your love. Listen to the Song of Songs: “Love is strong as death” (8,6). What wonderful words, brethren !… Who can resist death ? People resist flames, floods, steel; they resist tyrants and kings; let death come and who can resist it? There is nothing stronger. Love alone can match up to its strength. It can be said that love is strong as death. Because love kills what we used to be to make us become what as yet we were not, it carries out in us a work of death. Saint Paul died this death. He said: “The world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal 6,14), and those to whom he said: “You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3,3) died this death. Love is strong as death… let peace, therefore, be in your strength, Jerusalem ; let peace be in your love. And by this strength, love, peace “may prosperity be in your towers” (Ps 121[122],7), that is to say, on your heights… Profusion of delights, countless riches, this is the God who is one, this is he with whom all this city’s inhabitants hold communion. This is he who will be our abundance in the city of Jerusalem.
maronite readings – rosary,team

“I rejoiced because they said to me, ‘We will go up to the house of the Lord.’ And now we have set foot within your gates, O Jerusalem” (Ps 122[121],1-2). What Jerusalem is this? On earth there is a city of this name but it is a mere shadow of that other Jerusalem. What kind of happiness is there in standing in a Jerusalem here below unable to stand of itself but which fell to the ground in ruins?… It is not of the Jerusalem here below that someone speaks who has such great love, such great longing, such great desire to come to the Jerusalem, “our mother”, of which Saint Paul says that it is “eternal in the heavens” (Gal 4,26; 2Cor 5,1)… “O Jerusalem, may your peace be in your strength” (Ps 122[121],7). That is to say, may your peace be in your love, for your love is your strength. Hear the Song of Songs: “Love is strong as death” (8,6)… And indeed, love destroys what we have been so that we might become, through a sort of death, what we were not… This was the sort of death that was working in him who said: “The world is crucified to me and I to the world” (Gal 6,14). It was of this death that the same apostle was speaking when he said: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3,3). Yes, “love is strong as death”. If love is strong then it is powerful; it has great strength; it is strength itself… So may your peace be in your strength, O Jerusalem. May your peace be in your love.
maronite readings – rosary,team

     From the Incarnation to the Ascension, the life of the Word incarnate is surrounded by the adoration and service of angels… Their song of praise at the birth of Christ has not ceased resounding in the Church’s praise: “Glory to God in the highest!” (Lk 2,14). They protect Jesus in his infancy, serve him in the desert, strengthen him in his agony in the garden, when he could have been saved by them… Again, it is the angels who “evangelize” (Lk 2,10) by proclaiming the Good News of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. They will be present at Christ’s return, which they will announce, to serve at his judgement.      In the meantime, the whole life of the Church benefits from the mysterious and powerful help of angels. In her liturgy, the Church joins with the angels to adore the thrice-holy God, (Is 6,6). She invokes their assistance (in the funeral liturgy’s In Paradisum deducant te angeli. . .[“May the angels lead you into Paradise. . .”]). Moreover, in the “Cherubic Hymn” of the Byzantine Liturgy, she celebrates the memory of certain angels more particularly (St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, and the guardian angels).      From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession. “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life,” (St Basil). Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God. **************************************************************************** “The Cherubic Hymn” (from the Offertory of the Divine liturgy of St John Chrysostom):     We who, in this mystery, praise Thee with all the saints and every creature in heaven and sing the thrice-holy hymn to the life-giving Trinity, now lay aside all worldy cares to receive the King of all things, invisibly escorted by the armies of the angels, Alleluia!

maronite readings – rosary,team

In almost every passage of Scripture the spiritual meaning plays an important part. But in this passage especially we must look for spiritual depth within the thread of its meaning… How is it that he himself can say: “Peace I leave with you, my own peace I give you” (Jn 14,27) if he has come to divide fathers from their sons, sons from their fathers, breaking their connection? How can we be called “cursed if you dishonor your father” (Dt 27,16) yet fervent if we abandon him? If we understand that religion comes first and filial devotion second then we will understand this question to be clarified: for we have to pass on to the human after the divine. For if we have duties towards our parents, how much more to the Father of our parents to whom we owe thanksgiving for our parents?… He doesn’t say, then, that we must give up those we love but that we must prefer God before all else. Besides, do we not find in another book: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10,37). What is forbidden is not to love your parents but to prefer them to God. For our blood relations are among God’s blessings and no one is to love the good things they have received more than the God who conserves the blessings he has given.
maronite readings – rosary,team

We have no right to judge the rich. For our part, what we desire is not a class struggle but a class encounter, in which the rich save the poor and the poor save the rich. With regard to God, our poverty is our humble recognition and acceptance of our sinfulness, helplessness, and utter nothingness, and the acknowledgment of our neediness before Him, which expresses itself as hope in Him, as an openness to receive all things from Him as from our Father. Our poverty should be true gospel poverty: gentle, tender, glad, and open-hearted, always ready to give an expression of love. Poverty is love before it is renunciation. To love, it is necessary to give. To give, it is necessary to be free from selfishness.
maronite readings – rosary,team