Thursday 10th December – Thursday the 2^nd week of Advent

Reflection: Psalm 145: 1, 9-13

OUR COMPASSIONATE GOD

When God calls us to be compassionate, He simply asks us to extend to others what we receive from him daily. Indeed our God is compassionate. You only have to sincerely look back on your life and you will find several situations and circumstances in which God’s immense compassion played out in your life or family.

It is only because of our heavenly Father’s great kindness and compassion that we can approach Him daily despite our frailty. God owes us nothing. Yet, every new day brings with it a new dimension of God’s steadfast love for us (Lamentations 3:22-23). He promises us in the first reading of today that He will meet us at the very point of our needs, causing fresh water to flow in the desert lands of our lives and fruitfulness in place of barrenness (Isaiah 41:18-19)

What then should be our response my dear young friend to our heavenly Father’s great kindness towards us?

1. God’s greatness calls us to be grateful to Him. We must make it a habit even now as youth to spend time praising God. Take time to think of His great deeds in your life and join your voice with the psalmist today in proclaiming God’s greatness. Look at the promises He has in store for you and lift up your voice in thanksgiving even if you are going through a wilderness experience right now. (Habakkuk 3: 17-19).
2. Our father’s great kindness also calls us as young people to be compassionate, kind and merciful to others. When we do this, we act like our Father in whose image we were created and who has commanded us to be merciful (Luke 6:36).

As we begin the Jubilee of Mercy, the Church calls us through the theme to be “Mercuful like the Father” .  Let us open our hearts to receive God’s immense mercy this year and share that mercy with others.

PRAYER: My heavenly Father, I thank you today for your kindness and compassion to me. Please place within me a heart of thanksgiving always. Amen.

KNOW YOUR FAITH: YOUCAT 488 – Why should we thank God?

Everything that we are and have comes from God. Paul says, “What have you that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). Being grateful to God, the giver of all good things makes you happy.

The greatest prayer of thanks is the “Eucharist” (“thanksgiving” in Greek) of Jesus, in which he takes bread and wine so as to offer in them to God all of creation, transformed. Whenever Christians give thanks, they are joining in Jesus’ great prayer of thanksgiving. For we, too, are transformed and redeemed by Jesus, and so from the depths of our hearts we can be grateful and tell God this in a variety of ways.

 HIDE A TREASURE: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” Matthew 5:7 RSV-CE

Today’s Readings: Isaiah 41:13-20; Psalm 145: 1, 9-13; Matthew 11: 11-15