One Minute Reflection – 27 October – “Month of the Holy Rosary” – Readings: Ps 129:3-4, Ps 129:1-2, Phil 1:6-11, Matt 22:15-21
Then Jesus said to them, Whose are this image and the inscription?
Matt 22:15-21
REFLECTION – At the beginning of the world all things were made by the Word of God “and without him nothing came to be”. Now man, too, had his existence from the Word of God because of the principle that there should be nothing without that Word. “Let us make man,” God said before he created him, and added, “with our hand” to express his pre-eminence so that he might not be compared to the rest of creation.“ And God,” says Scripture, “formed man”.
”And God formed man from the clay of the earth.” He now became man who was hitherto clay. That poor, paltry material, clay, found its way into the hands of God, happy enough at being merely touched by them. But why this honour? Was it that, without any further labour, the clay had instantly assumed its form at the touch of God? The truth is, a great matter was in progress out of which the creature under consideration was being fashioned. It is honoured whenever it experiences the hands of God, when it is touched by them, and pulled, and drawn out, and moulded into shape. Imagine God wholly absorbed in it: in his hand, his eye, his labor, his purpose, his wisdom, his providence and, above all, in his love, which was dictating the lineaments of this creature. For whatever was the form and expression given to the clay, Christ was in God’s thoughts as one day to become man, because the Word, too, was to be both clay and flesh even as the earth was then.
This is the meaning of the Father’s first words to his Son: “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness”. God made man, the creature which he moulded and fashioned, in the image of God, in other words of Christ. Thus, that clay that was even then putting on the image of Christ who was to come in the flesh, was not only the work but the pledge and surety given by God.
Tertullian
PRAYER – Shed Your clear light on our hearts, Lord, so that walking continually in the way of Your commandments, we may never be deceived or misled. Grant that the prayers of our Blessed Mother, who always holds Your Light up for others to see by, give us strength. Through Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, God forever, amen.
