January 6, 2025 // Optional Memorial of Saint André Bessette, Religious (in USA)
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: 1 John 3:22–4:6
Reflect on the Word //
That morning, I felt like I woke up and faceplanted into a gooey, sticky web of spiritual warfare. It was the kind of spiritual desolation that enveloped all of reality and made me feel like I had spiritual amnesia. Even though the Lord and our Most Blessed Mother had assured me innumerable times that they had my vocation in hand and had given confirmations and consolations galore, I was distraught and felt abandoned.
But the miracle started happening immediately when I walked into church and genuflected to greet Jesus a few minutes before morning Mass. Everything changed when Father invoked the Saint of the day in the opening prayer. I felt like a friend came near me to remind me of who I am in Jesus.
I had been quietly nurturing a fear and buying the menacing lie that Jesus is untrustworthy and certainly could not be faithful beyond what I could tangibly experience or imagine.
But thanks be to God for saintly friends who call us forward into Christ! The Beloved Disciple is so magnanimous as to call you and me “beloved” (1 John 4:1), and he leans into this profound encouragement. He tells you and me to test all spirits to see whether they are of God and then boldly gives the most fitting tool for discernment: “Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus does not belong to God. This is the spirit of the antichrist” (1 John 4:3).
Sister, I realize it can sound overly dramatic to hear the title “antichrist.” But I am so grateful our beloved friend, Saint John, has his finger right on the pulse of God’s Heart. He repeatedly calls us “beloved” because we need it. And then warns us of the spirit of the world. God calls us to be bold, and our saintly friends call us to boldly live as true believers and conquerors through Him, with Him, and in Him.
Relate to the Lord // Ask for the Saints intercession to help you discern your thoughts today.
Maria Kim-Ngân Bùi, after twenty years in religious life, is discerning a call to found a community of consecrated religious women dedicated to Our Lady and who will pray reparation for sins against the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, pray for conversions, and work for the evangelization of those who have left the Church or feel furthest from the Church.
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