Relationship is everything

The Lord Is My Chef Daily Recipe for the Soul by Fr. Nicanor F. Lalog II
Friday in the Twenty-Eighth Week of Ordinary Time, Year I, 20 October 2023
Romans 4:1-8   ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'> + ><]]]]'>   Luke 12:1-7

Our loving God and Father,
help us learn St. Paul's beautiful
teaching today about your 
righteousness and our justification -
that, essentially, everything 
in this life is our relationship with you
and with one another.

You justified and redeemed us
in your Son Jesus whom you
sent to restore that relationship with you
broken by sin in Adam and Eve; 
to renew and make that relationship 
work, you made us new in Christ
to make us worthy before you
and with one another in your grace. 

How wonderful as St. Paul explained
that long before your Laws came,
that relationship has always been there
wondrously expressed most especially
by Abraham in his deep faith in you;
faith is a relationship which Abraham
proved thrice to you:
when he obeyed your command for him
to leave his family and city to go to
the land you would show him;
when he believed even in his old age
you would give him a son in his wife
Sarah to become the father of all nations;
and when Isaac was finally born 
as he grew up, Abraham willingly
gave him up to you when you asked
him to be offered.
In all three instances,
Abraham never sinned to you
because he upheld and
valued so much your relationship 
with him.

Help us, God,
to be like Abraham in
upholding and preserving
most dearly this relationship
with you and with one another
we keep and nurture in faith.

For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. A worker’s wage is credited not as a gift, but as something due. But when one does not work, yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness.

Romans 4:3-5

Forgive us,
merciful Father, 
for being so proud,
always proving our worth
with all our works without
realizing that you have done
everything in our favor,
that there is nothing we can do
nor we may do for us to be saved
in ourselves, by ourselves
except to believe in you like
Abraham; let us not be hypocrites
like the Pharisees who do not
realize that everything is revealed
in you, including our thoughts;
let us remember that sin is
more than the evil acts we do
but most of all, our lack of faith
in you that we destroy 
our beautiful relationships with
you and with one another.
Amen.