Normandt' Catholic Meditations

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[Normandt]

198. Paul challenges us

Paul took Timothy under his wing and he wants to increase his knowledge. He wants his spiritual son to have a good background for living and transmitting faith. Paul, although held captive, finds in this situation a motive for improving the faith of others. Paul says to him:
"Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching." 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 2

Let's not stop proclaiming the Word, it's the basis of the salvation for all. Let's intervene with good words and with justice while respecting the people around us. This will require patience that will allow us to develop a greater and more accurate concern, to nurture and educate by relying on common sense and wisdom of Scripture.



Paul adds:
"Be self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of an evangelist; fulfill your ministry." 2 Timothy, chapter 4, verse 5

It's grace for Paul to have a spiritual son to whom he can pass on his experience. Paul's recommendations are accurate and timely. The ministry is also very joyful when faith is realized and developed in people's hearts.

Too want to do too much, faith loses its meaning, it loses its lustre. It's important to be ourselves, live the present and let the Lord act in and through our lives.

Even if we have received a lot, let's remain simple, let's be people with heart, soul, people with a clear mind, less about appearance and engaged in the good, plunged in Jesus Christ's Good News for the world. All we are is to be faithful witnesses and serve God's cause.

Let's refocus our heart on God's. May our life become filled with Trinitarian Love, to reach all the children of God. May there be so much love around us that even the most rebellious be touched and freely transformed.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

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[Normandt]

199. Let's unite

The Lord our God is rallying. During the Old Testament period, God never stopped wanting to bring the people back into his covenant. He still has the same desire.

Even when we suffer and we live difficult passages of life, God is present with us and he supports us with Love. When we receive it daily in our lives, the much needed faith increases and helps us in the midst of the trials we experience.



Then there's the community. God keeps inviting the living communities of faith to enter into his Intelligence and Wisdom, so that we may also feed people outside the Church. The common good is that all people have the chance to walk toward their salvation in God. All people, without exception, must know that God Loves them.

Jesus needed to surround himself with people like the Apostles. It's necessary to surround ourselves with people who have faith. We read that crowds follow Jesus, want to hear him and receive his teaching. Jesus also taught Joseph and Mary how to become a holy family. The family is the basic cell for the community.

Let's meditate in our hearts on the delicacy and wisdom of God to each person.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

[Normandt]

[Normandt]

200. God needs evangelizers

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who gathers the sheep of Israel and the whole world. Every lost sheep, he wants to bring back to the Father. He doesn't want any of them to be lost. He continues to send prophets today. He wants to get his message of freedom and salvation to us.

Today, where we are, we're called to share the Good News of our salvation in Jesus Christ. We are the people Jesus needs for our time. His Spirit will guide us to share his message so that the world hears it.

Jesus is there for everyone, but not everyone gives himself the means to meet with Jesus. When we cannot evangelize people near us, let's look elsewhere for other sheep. May we work full time, continuously.



We often hear that in families and with their own children that it's not always easy to keep up with faith. This isn't the time to become stationary and discouraged. It opens the door for other people. If we join other people, they may join the children of the families someday. Meanwhile, our faith supports our children. Let's keep going. In any case, we know that Jesus is in their heart.

Let's not lose hope. Let's place our trust in Jesus. In this way we will have vocations everywhere, committed people who will announce the good news. Paul does not force anyone, he leaves elsewhere:
'From now on I will go to the Gentiles.' So he left there and went to a house belonging to a man named Titus Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next to a synagogue. Crispus, the synagogue official, came to believe in the Lord along with his entire household, and many of the Corinthians who heard believed and were baptized. Acts, chapter 18, verses 6 to 8

Jesus is with us. We want to keep his Love with us forever. May our sorrow of seeing a world seek and not find a shepherd turn into joy of being able to join them, personally, and to evangelize them.

May the world know that God is alive and that salvation has passed for every person of every generation. It's this joy that we are called to transmit to others.

Book : Here, where we are
Normand Thomas

[Normandt]

[Normandt]

201. Help humanity

Since the beginning of humanity, the rich want not to be poor and the poor would like to be rich or at least have what's necessary to survive. Still, investing a little in the poorest and they would be active in society.

How many poor neighborhoods around big cities, with few resources and efforts, could be helped and recover? It's a strange mystery that of the human being in front of poverty.

We still notice them today. They are begging on the street. Their budget is tight. They are easy to recognize and yet how many people are passing by them. The rulers don't seem to be able to find answers to help out. Television shows are devoted to people from the most disadvantaged countries.



But it doesn't stop there. Although it's important and disappointing, there are other kinds of poverty. There are people who cannot go into a group or in a small place. There are those who cannot write, those who are intimidated, those who are marginalized, those who don't eat (anorexic), those who cannot stop eating, sickness, sadness.

There are the disappointments of life, the bad weather, the horrors of war, and so on. Poverty then follows several slippery and often steep slopes.

There's a multitude of people who help in all dimensions of poverty. Let's encourage these people and help them to continue to invest time and resources in this mission of humanity.

Brother Andre of Mont-Royal knew how to find, by God's grace, the wound of a person and ask Saint Joseph to intercede to Jesus for healing. Saint Bernadette Soubirous, by the faith of God in her, has made Lourdes a stronghold to many cures from which bodies and hearts can be healed. And in Medjugorje, people can find peace through Mary's intercession.

Let's observe and seek in our heart the precise point that is wrong with a person and offer it to Jesus. Sometimes that's what bothers us most about this person. We may have similar poverties.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

[Normandt]

[Normandt]

202. Without hurting

As soon as we feel angry with a person's gesture or word, it's the signal that informs us to offer it and him to Jesus. Something hurts us in what he says or does? it's also a signal to pray for him and to put his difficulty back to Jesus. It's a mission to simply find faults and sins in others, without becoming instigators and without hurting them further.

It's a mission to detect what is wrong with others and it is evangelization to hand it over to Jesus, so that he cleanses the wound and transforms their lives.

We are invited to observe what the poverty of the person is. What's stopping him from moving forward? What prevents him from being free and confident? Where is his difficulty?

How many people close to us could we help? We are on a mission where we are, with Jesus and above all with his Spirit. Let's also offer what is wrong with us to Jesus.



Caring for our poverty takes on a double meaning.

The first sense is that there is poverty among people who need help. We must help the poor recover from everything they lack of, mostly from a relationship with Jesus and be aware of what's essential to their survival.

The second meaning to give to poverty is that it's practical and necessary if it leads us to be free from the bonds of this world and leads us to Jesus. Being poor, for example, or free of drugs, is poverty that leads us to freedom. Fasting teaches us to become poor of superfluous or bad habits.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

[Normandt]

[Normandt]

203. Our weaknesses in God

Let's meditate Paul's reflection:
"Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God. It is due to him that you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, so that, as it is written, 'Whoever boasts, should boast in the Lord.'" 1 Corinthians, Chapter 1, verses 26 to 31

Paul seems to have understood how a person on a mission is. He doesn't elaborate much and defines it in a few words: "foolish, weak, lowly, despised". That's what Paul thinks of us. It's not very flattering. But it depends on the point of view of the person who receives it.



For the world, being foolish, weak, despised, it's the equivalent of nailing us onto a cross. In their eyes, we're poor.
But when we place our weaknesses in God, in what Paul says about us, becomes strength. For the strength doesn't come from our pride, our know-how, our wisdom, but from God. We place our pride in God.

We are foolish to believe in a Crucified Messiah. We are despised to follow Jesus, we are weak to trust only in Jesus. We mention this from the beginning to give us an idea of the different types of poverty. For some people, poverty is wealth, for others wealth is poverty. But, in reality, there is real wealth and real poverty, and all humans stand between these two realities.

As we read this book, we're invited to reflect on our different personal experiences of poverty and the different kinds of poverty we see around us. These discovered poverties we can give them to Jesus. We will be on a mission to help improve the quality of people's lives.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Nomand Thomas

[Normandt]

[Normandt]

204. Life and happiness

We could still hear today the message Moses receives from the Lord:
"I have today set before you life and prosperity, death and doom." Deuteronomy, chapter 30, verse 15
God proposes to all: "life and prosperity". What comes at the beginning is life. Life is a gift of God's Love and what's complementary is happiness. Happiness is lived in the present. Happiness is to know we're Loved. But above all, happiness comes from its source, which is God.

Happiness comes from the Lord. Nobody else has given it. Happiness is the fruit of God's Love. It is to be shared and received between people.

It's the ultimate choice of our faith. We have the choice between "life and prosperity, or death and doom". Happiness is in God. God has nothing to do with evil, death and doom. He offers us Love. It is we who can either follow the road to happiness or descend the slope into evil.



Unlike welcoming God's Love, the result is the misfortune that leads to death. Death is the gradual response that leads to refusing God. It's our responsibility to choose one or the other, life or death, good or evil, truth or lies, forgiveness or hatred, joy or despair, etc.
The choice seems easy, but according to our experience, we know that sometimes we have wandered in the wrong at the expense of good.

Under the ashes of misery we see, there is often the embers of Love that we no longer see. In this world that too often proposes a culture of death in all its forms, we struggle to find embers under the ashes.

We are created to be the bearers of embers, to ignite the world of God's Love. This ember, we carry in our heart, so that others discover "life and prosperity" which is suggested to us.

Jesus also speaks in the same sense:
"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." Luke, chapter 9, verse 23
This cross is very light when we know about the Love we bring to humanity. For people who do not know that the cross is Love, it can seem heavy. Heaviness comes with lack of love, either from others or from us.

The cross of Love that Jesus offers us is much easier to bear than misfortune. And the more we share God's Love, the more our existence becomes meaningful. Let's give misfortune, evil, poverty to Jesus and live fully with the embers of the Love of God.

Book: Caring for our poverties
Normand Thomas

[Normandt]