The Catholic Calendar for Friday, May 6, 2005
Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter

Scripture from today's Liturgy of the Word:
Acts 18:9-18
Psalm 47:2-7
John 16:20-23

A reflection on today's Sacred Scripture:

"But your grief will become joy. . ."

Jesus tells us that when a woman is in labor all that she knows for that time is the pain and "grief" of the labor -- the hardship. Once she has given birth she knows the joy of the little one she holds in her hands.

We who are in the world, labor in grief to bring forth new life. Jesus is the one who bestows this new life in God, but we labor shedding the old person and putting on the new person. In a sense we are both the ones who are in labor and the one who is born. We are born from the Holy Spirit of God. One of the Church Fathers said, "Every man is conceived twice, once in the flesh and once in the spirit. But it is the birth in the spirit that is the birth unto eternal life."

So our labor has a meaning and an end. At that end we will be born again into the life of the world hereafter. God will take us in His arms and hold us close to Him, as a father rejoicing in the birth of a child, in the addition of a new member to the family.

- JuandelaCruz
(http://floscarmeli.stblogs.org/)

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