The Life of God is now our Life

[BarbaraTherese]

The last couple of days in The Office of Readings in the First Reading, often drawn from the Old Testament, I have been noticing not a God of Judgement in the Old Testament but a God of Love and of Mercy.
What follows is taken from the ten commandments in Leviticus but I am posting only sections that point to this God of Great Love and Mercy and concern for his people, most especially the poor and the weak, vulnerable - and this concern God asks us to share through sharing in His Own Life…these Readings remind too of Jesus who said “I have not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets but to bring them to fulfillment” and how Jesus lived out His Message…He was and is The Message Incarnate forecasted/pefigured everywhere in the Old Testament and only the actuality or what is forecasted or prefigured can fulfill the forecasted and the prefigured i.e. Jesus, Second Person of The Blessed Trinity become fully human…
Charity is the very life of God alive in us overflowing out to others …In The Mass we pray “may we come to share in the Divinity of Christ who humbled Himself to share in our humanity” Astounding!

Leviticus 19:1 - 37 ©
universalis.com/20080304/readings.htm
“When you gather the harvest of your land, you are not to harvest to the very end of the field. You are not to gather the gleanings of the harvest. You are neither to strip your vine bare nor to collect the fruit that has fallen in your vineyard. You must leave them for the*** poor and the stranger***. I am the Lord your God…
You must not curse the dumb, nor put an obstacle in the*** blind man’s*** way…
…You must neither be partial to the little man nor overawed by the great;…You must not exact vengeance, nor must you bear a grudge against the children of your people. You must love your neighbour as yourself…

“You are to rise up before grey hairs, you are to honour old age and fear your God.
“If a stranger lives with you in your land, do not molest him. You must count him as one of your own countrymen and love him as yourself – for you were once strangers yourselves in Egypt.

Second Reading
universalis.com/20080304/readings.htm
From a sermon by Pope St Leo the Great
In praise of charity

In John’s gospel the Lord says:

By this love you have for one another, everyone will know you are my disciples

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In a letter by John we read: My dear people, let us love one another since love comes from God and everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Anyone who fails to love can never have known God, because God is love.

So the faithful should look into themselves and carefully examine their minds and the impulses of their hearts.

If they find some of the fruits of love stored in their hearts then they must not doubt God’s presence within them, but to make themselves more and more able to receive so great a guest they should do more and more works of durable mercy and kindness.

After all, if God is love, charity should know no limit, for God himself cannot be confined within limits.
What is the appropriate time for performing works of charity? My beloved children, any time is the right time, but these days of Lent provide a special encouragement. Those who want to be present at the Lord’s Passover in holiness of mind and body should seek above all to win this grace.

Charity contains all other virtues

and covers a multitude of sins.
As we prepare to celebrate that greatest of all mysteries, by which the blood of Jesus Christ destroyed our sins, let us first of all make ready the sacrificial offerings — that is, our works of mercy.

What God in his goodness has already given to us, let us give it to those who have sinned against us

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And to the poor also, and to those who are afflicted in various ways, let us show a more open-handed generosity so that God may be thanked through many voices and the needy may be fed as a result of our fasting.

No act of devotion on the part of the faithful gives God more pleasure than the support that is lavished on his poor.

Where God finds charity with its loving concern, there he recognises the reflection of his own fatherly care.

Do not be put off giving by a lack of resources. A generous spirit is itself great wealth, and there can be no shortage of material for generosity where it is Christ who feeds and Christ who is fed. His hand is present in all this activity: his hand, which multiplies the bread by breaking it and increases it by giving it away.
When you give alms, do not be anxious but full of happiness. The greatest treasure will go to the one who has kept the least for himself. The holy apostle Paul tells us: He who provides seed for the sower will give bread for food, provide you with more seed, and increase the harvest of your goodness, in Christ Jesus our Lord, who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.