To help the young people build their lives upon the rock which is Jesus, the Word of God, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To help the young people build their lives upon the rock which is Jesus, the Word of God, and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

This is the fourth mission statement of the Emmaus. Let us first begin with the second part of the statement, to live in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Why is it important to live in the power of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is the giver of all gifts. The Holy Spirit imparts various gifts such as wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and fear of the Lord. Procession of the Spirit bears fruits like charity, joy, peace, patience and more (Gal 5:22-23). And all these are for the common good of the Church and are directed to the upbuilding of the Church.

So, how do we live in the power of the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit can be considered the breath of Christ. So for Jesus to keep breathing on us, we must keep close to Christ. Logical right? St Jerome said: "Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ". So Christ = the Word of God. Pope Benedict says the secret to staying close to Christ is to mediate on His Word.

Which brings us to the first part of the mission statement. Why should the Word of God be the foundation of our life?

Humanly speaking, the human word seems like nothing. As soon as it is pronounce, it disappears. But the human word has incredible force; it is words that create history, words that form thoughts, thoughts that create words. Therefore it is words that form history, reality.. 

Similarly is the Word of God. In the beginning verse of Genesis 1:3, Then God commanded, "Let there be light"-and light appeared. God spoke and reality is born. All things are products of the Word. We are created from the Word and called to serve the Word. In serving the Lord, we achieve the goal of our existence.

So the Word of God is the foundation of everything. It is the true reality. We have to be realistic and reply upon this reality. We must change our concept that solid things, thing we can see and touch are the most certain realities of life. At the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7:24-27), Jesus spoke about two possible foundations for building the house of one's life; sand and rock. The person who builds on sand, builds his life on visible and tangible things, on success, career, money. This may seems to be the true realities of life (we can see etc.) but one day, all this will vanish. We have to be a realist and recognize that the Word of God is the foundation of all things and build our life on this foundation. Only the Word of God is permanent and as stable as the Heavens.

How do we then build our life on this foundation? There are three simple steps.

We can start by listening to the Word. There are several ways we can listen to the Word. Through private bible reading, bible study group (Logos!), liturgy when we hear the Word of God being proclaimed and the Word being broken for us (Sermon). Fr. Cantalamessa mentioned that we should be careful not to stop at this stage or transform the personal reading of the Word of God into an impersonal reading, meaning that we just read it as a text and devoid of feelings (the Word becomes empty and meaningless to us). This is because the bible is not merely a book, it is a divine revelation. We have to read it not only with our intellect but with our entire existence. And we have to invoke the Holy Spirit help when reading the bible, for guidance, to open our hearts and minds, to till the soil in our heart for the seed to be planted.

Next, we have to contemplate on the Word. We have to allow the Word to enlighten our being, our thoughts, desires, what it means for us. Contemplating the Word gives us knowledge of God, how much He loves us, how He is constantly reaching out to men in the history of salvation, how mercifully he is and the list goes on. Contemplating on the Word also gives us knowledge about ourselves. How weak we are, how full of attachments we still have for this world, how far we are from Jesus and how unlike we are in His image. Knowing our weakness helps us to know which areas of our life we should change to be more like Christ.

Fr. Cantalamessa also said that we should not limit ourselves to depend solely on other people's explanation and what others have written. We should leave room to attempt reading the bible from our own understanding so as to bring forth some meaning, of course, this has to be done in accordance to church teachings. We need to search ourselves humbly, trustingly because at prayer, we too may gather truths and connections in the Word of God that have escaped most expert commentators who are crammed with technical information about scriptures. This is still something that I struggle with at times because I do not trust myself to interpret scripture correctly or simply because I am lazy to think.. I am trying my best and Mary is a good model. Often in scriptures, we read Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart. Mary seek to understand the Words, comparing them in her heart.

And finally, we have to be doers of the Word. Drawing reference from Mt 7:24, we read that "anyone who hears these words and obey them is..."  So only by doing the Word are we considered to have built our house of life on rocks..

Also, doing the Word helps us to understand the Word. An example on compassion by St. Gregory the Great goes like this..

A person reads the Word of God "Give alms...", takes it to heart and starts practicing. Thus he starts becoming more compassionate through almsgiving. So when the next time he happens to come across another sentence like "I was a father to the needy.." (Job 29:16), a sentence which he may have previously overlooked, he would from experience, understands what it means to be a father to the needy.

Fr. Cantalamessa also encourages us to take action immediately because as human we can be quite forgetful and absent minded. After reading the Word of God, we must ask ourselves: "How can we put this Word God has given me into practice now?' In one way or another, we can always make a start on doing something. It could be in the form of repentance. Eg. we read the Word of God and realize that we have been judgmental. We can ask for God's forgiveness and grace, then ask ourselves who have we been judgmental, what steps can we take to love the person more? Perhaps it could be something simple like initiating a conversation the next time we see the person, etc.

An example given by William during one of his teaching session, when choosing between bible reading and eg, playing computer games. We can tell ourself, I will only read the bible tonight and from tomorrow night and for the rest of nights in my life onwards, I will play computer games. Tell yourself this every night and soon you will be Oka Kurnia"three" (two is taken by you know who ;P). So why do we do this? Because if we do otherwise, we would have fallen to the devil's trap. We have to know that the devil is crafty so we have to be smarter and one step ahead of the devil.

This way, the Word of God indeed prunes our lives, cut away the dry and useless branches so that we are purified by the Word and be able to bear even more fruits. I hope this sharing will enable all of us to see how necessary it is to place the Word of God in the center of our lives, and let Christ light enlighten us in our work, studies, family, friends, free time etc.. We must also exercise the Holy Spirit's gift amidst the ups and downs of our daily lives.. Only when we ourselves are transformed can we effectively transform the people around us, in this context the young people. 

God Bless:)

References: homilies by our Papal (Pope Benedict XVI), book by Fr. Cantalamessa (The Mystery of God's Word), Catechism of the Catholic Church and of course, the Word of God.. :)