Posts by Fr. Luke Ijezie
God’s Plan and Human Cooperation
God always has great plans for us His creatures. In the accomplishment of these plans, He usually invites us to cooperate with Him. The interesting thing is that He never comes with force but invites us with great arguments and persuasive words. We find all these played out in the readings of today’s solemn feast…
Read MoreServing God with Trustful Openness
The best approach to God is that of complete openness and docility to learn and to accept all from Him. The psalmist of Psalm 139 says it aptly: “O Lord, you search me, and you know me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.…
Read MoreConversion Experience and the Command to Spread the Good News
Conversion is an experience we are invited to have every day and every moment of life. It happens through renewed encounter with God. Each time we encounter God genuinely, we come out renewed in our mode of thinking and mode of living. Today the Church celebrates the conversion of Paul, the great Apostle to the…
Read MoreThe Lord Has Comforted His People
One of the greatest songs of Advent, which tells all about Christmas is the song: “O come o come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear.” The wordings of the song go back to a Latin form in the medieval ages, but its present form…
Read MoreConditions for Entering God’s Presence
The Christian religion presents the greatest aspiration of the human person as that of seeing the face of God. This is called the beatific vision. It is the summum bonum (the highest good). The Psalmist of Psalm 42:2 cries out: “My soul thirsts for God, the living God, when can I enter and see the…
Read MoreRecognizing the Signs of God’s Presence
Wisdom is the power to make proper discernment in every situation. The wise person is able to make good judgements and adequate choices in the face of conflicting options. Some situations are very complex, and one easily makes errors of judgement. We meet such situations every day, and we need discernment to discover the great…
Read MoreLiving with Self-Contentment
Self-contentment is a special virtue that inclines one to be satisfied with whatever one has. The contrary is that of never being satisfied but always complaining and endlessly asking for more. Greed and avarice are born of insatiability. It leads to grasping and extortion and self-centeredness. The readings of today invite us to adopt a…
Read MoreFollowing Jesus with Commitment
Jesus started his earthly mission by gathering disciples around him. He always asked them tofollow him. His aim was to groom them properly so that they would be able to follow hisways even when he was not there with them. Christianity is a followership of Jesus. It is areligion of commitment to live totally in…
Read MoreWhat Makes Us Strong
A conversation on what we can learn through the life and works of St. James Sometimes we wonder how we succeed in overcoming obstacles and persecutions that ordinarily seem insurmountable. As Christians, we often find ourselves championing noble causes and waging battles that are far beyond our human strength. Knowing our human weakness, we are…
Read MoreTrusting in the Power of God’s Presence
Life is full of distressing situations. The distress becomes very acute when we feel radically incapable of confronting the challenges that face us. Forces that are determined to destroy us often threaten us, but we feel unprepared to overcome them. At such moments, we feel how radically weak we are as mortals and are easily…
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