Tuesday, November 15 : Saint John Chrysostom

Looking wholly to God’s promise and setting aside all human ways of looking at things, knowing God to be capable of accomplishments beyond nature to achieve, Abraham put his trust in the words addressed to him, let no shadow of doubt cross his mind and did not waver as to the meaning he should give God’s words. For it is in the nature of faith to put its trust in the power of the one who promises… God had promised Abraham that a posterity without number would be born of him. This promise exceeded the possibilities of nature and all purely human forms of perception and that is why his faith towards God “was credited him as righteousness” (Gn 15,6; Gal 3,6). Well then, if we are on the watch, yet more wonderful promises have been made to us and we will be satisfied to an even greater extent than human thought can dream. And for this, we have only to put our trust in the power of him who has made these promises to us so as to merit the righteousness that comes from faith and obtain the promised reward. For all those good things we are hoping for far exceed all human conception and thought, so exceedingly wonderful is what we have been promised! Indeed, these promises do not concern only the present, the flourishing of our lives and the enjoyment of visible goods, but they are even more about the time when we have quitted this earth, when our bodies have become subject to corruption, when our remains have been reduced to dust. God promises us that he will then raise them up and establish them in glorious splendour, “for this which is corruptible must clothe itself with incorruptibility,” Saint Paul assures us (1Cor 15,53). More than this, after the resurrection of our bodies, we have received the promise of enjoying the Kingdom and of obtaining through endless ages, in the company of the saints, those ineffable goods that “eye has not seen and ear has not heard and that have not entered the human heart” (1Cor 2,9). Do you grasp the superabundance of the promises? Do you grasp the greatness of these gifts?
maronite readings – rosary,team