This refrain from the Psalms “He does not treat us as our sins demand.” This is an echo of the mercy of God for our ears. If God were to treat us as our faults demand, we would be lost, without salvation. Our faults would demand hard things upon us, if God was not merciful; but He is. Always He uses Love with us. He descended into our mercy and rescued us from the condition in which we found ourselves.
Ask the Lord in this day to descend into your troubles and to save you. Pray this today.
Lord, come to the troubles of my life, of my sin, of my fear, of my faults, of my lack of faith, of my illness, of my unemployment, of my depression, of my unfaithfulness. . .
Thus as the Lord comes into our mercy, we need to enter into the mercy of others, of our brothers/sisters, of the person who betrayed us, hurts us, injures us, in order to save and to give pardon.
Lent is also to allow God to come into our struggles and for us to enter the struggles of others.
God bless you,
Father Reinaldo
Father Reinaldo is a consecrated member of the New Song Community and writes from the Archdiocese of Palmas in the state of Tocantins, Brazil
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, Catholic, catholicismanew, Jesus, New Song Community, newsongtv, Pe. Reinaldo Cazumbá, Psalm 103, stbenedictsomerville
Obviously, this parable is often used to demonstrate the mercy of God and the difference between how the Father sees things in mercy and how the faithful son sees things as the more practical. However, there is another element of this story that I think we need to look at this week.
Let us remember that this is a fiction story. It is a parable and it is not representative of actual events. However, Jesus uses a formula common to fiction writing in this parable. The formula is that the main character must change by the end of the story and the climax of the story is where everything comes together.
Using that understanding of the fiction formula, you could teach how to write fiction based on this parable, it follows the classic formula. Therefore, let us look at another element in it. The father and the faithful son apparently do not change. Therefore, their character remains the same throughout the story. This gives us a better understanding of whom they are. We may even understand more about them, than the main character, the Prodigal Son. We will look at that reality in a second.
We can focus on the Father’s mercy, but let us instead focus on what the son learns, because this becomes quite serious in our lives.
The son leaves the Father and with all that money becomes filled with himself. He needs nothing, he has got
his money and his money is power. He can become his own god of his own life and do what he thinks is best. When he ends up flying through his money and ends up on the pig farm with nothing, he comes to a powerful understanding. Ultimately, on his own, he is nothing. He has nothing, he has no value, he actually has at best the same value as the pigs and is treated that way. By himself, he really has no base for his existence as human being. He has base for his existence as animal, but not as human.
Now, when he returns to his father, he offers to be nothing more than a slave. He recognizes that he lost his dignity as human when he left. However, remember, to ask to be a slave or even a little higher, a servant is a step up from where he is and a long way down from the dignity that he gave up.
Now let’s take a turn. What would happen if the Father said “no” like the faithful son wanted him to do. The prodigal comes and begs to be treated like a slave and the father says “No, you no good lazy lout. You disgraced the family, you left us doing one third more work than we needed to. Actually, your brother has had to do the work of two because of you. Get out of here, I will chase you out of here like a bad dog.”
What would the son have? Nothing. He would not have money, but also he would be without his human dignity. He would be left to live with the pigs until he died of exposure or starvation or in prison. He would have nothing. The other son and the father would have died with their dignity in tact and the son would have died alone, broken and dehumanized.
Before we do that exercise where we ask ourselves if we better identify with the father, the faithful son or the prodigal son: let us ask look at one more point here. The prodigal son returns to his original dignity through no power of his own, but only through the generosity of the Father. Everything he ever had was from the father and everything he receives after he gives up his dignity and loses his money is from the father. Apart from the father he has nothing. Neither does the faithful son. Remember, the father tells him that everything he has this faithful son will inherit. Outside of the generosity of the Father, one or both sons would have nothing.
Let us put that in our own lives. You and I have nothing without God, nothing. Remember, the father is 
reminiscent of the heavenly father. It is His generosity that gets us through every day. For good or ill, when we wake up in the morning, it is only through the generosity of the father that you and I have anything from our various sense, our life, to the dignity that we have.
God is a generous God and through Him we have everything including our future.
Now let us go to the next step: every single human being on this planet has the same offering of dignity that you have. You can talk about the worst dictator, the murderer doing life, the good servant, the holy monk and the Pope as well as you and I, each of us have been given the gift of human dignity and the invitation to accept the gift of eternal life with God. To not believe that simple fact is to not believe in the Catholic doctrine of salvation.
However, all of it comes from the generosity of God and Him alone. Everyone who stands on their own strength and celebrates their own gifts is like the prodigal son, they may never lose anything, they may never end up with pigs, they may even die rich, however they will never enter the kingdom of God unless that gift is bestowed on them by the heavenly father and they accept it. There is nothing that they have or can do that can force the Father’s hand. Everything is in his hands.
When we accept this, we find ourselves recognizing just how generous God is and how much we rely on Him. We rely on him ultimately for all things.
What the prodigal son learned in that experience is not just the mercy of the Father, but how much the Father is the reason why he was alive at all.
You are only because God is! That is a philosophical statement that means, that God’s existence is the 
reason for yours. Yours is not the cause of His.
When you are going through your daily routine whether you are having a good week or a bad week, remember that every breath you take, every movement you make, every gift you have, every morsel of food you eat is all because of the generosity of the Father. This is something the faithful son never understood and the prodigal son learned the hard way.
St. Paul reminds us to dedicate ourselves to thankfulness. It is considered the secret to holiness. If you do that that you will discover the awful truth. Apart from Christ not only can you do nothing, you ultimately have nothing. In Christ you have everything by God’s generosity. Celebrate what God has done for you each and every day.
God Bless You,
Fr. Robert J. Carr
Fr. Carr is an Alliance member of the New Song Community. He is the pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Somerville, MA EUA and is the editor of this blog.
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Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, luke 15, New Song Community, newsongtv, prodigal son, stbenedictsomerville
That which God promises us is infinitely better that that which He asks of us.
When the Lord chooses a person, it is not because of his capacities; He sees the heart of the person and the capacity. He remains in a heart that gives itself for Him and stays with that person. He remakes him through the action of His Spirit.
The true power of God is the Holy Spirit, that is His love.
One is to be a person remade in the Holy Spirit. And the person thus is like the light that one lights at an entrance, because as one enters, God enters too. This is so simple, it is for those that want God in their lives.
In the same way that God calls one day and His grace manifests itself in your life, in that moment, the oppositor, he that is against God, also puts himself in attack against you.
The first attack of evil is to bring you to discouragement. Discouragement signifies removing the soul of the person, the person becomes spiritually sterile: The evil one wants to discourage you and uses all his strength to do this. He tries to discourage those of God. The only goal that he has is to make you discouraged and make you turn from God. You not being with God is good for him, because that which he wants is to take us from God.
Do not allow discouragement to enter your heart. Get up from lying on the floor and take your life in your hands saying: My life is done with desperation. I do not want to be a slave of discouragement because of the things that happen to me. Before you are two roads, life and death the word of God says choose life!
The second thing that the evil one wants is to make it that you becomes a source of scandal, because when a person chooses to follow God, if the evil one detours him, not only does the person fall, but others fall with him/her.
We are are constantly being proved and put in combat and we cannot be motives of scandal. You that are walking with the Lord need to understand one thing. Do not put your focus on persons, because they are broken and they fall like you. Put your focus on God.
We that are in service to God should know that people see us and many times they don’t know the difference-and if we fall to temptation we can become a motive of scandal which can separate others from God. Therefore, the word says: “My son, when you come to serve the LORD, prepare yourself for trials. Be sincere of heart and steadfast, undisturbed in time of adversity.” (Sirach 2:1-2ff) because the evil one wants to make you a source of scandal.
We that are of Christ have to follow the footsteps of Him. The word of God shows us what we should do before temptation. “Remain strong in justice and in the fear of the Lord.” That is to remain firm in doing good, principly for those that are against us. And three things are fundamental for preparing our soul: be humble, hope with patience and suffer the demands of God without complaining, knowing that God is for you.
Márcio Mendes
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, christ, holy Spirit, marcio mendes, New Song Community, newsongtv, stbenedictsomerville
It is not possible to love others if we do not love God in the first place. It is not possible to love God if we don’t feel His love for us.
We need to experience that God loved us first, because we are loved and we experience His love, we begin to love Him too. And loving God we begin also to love our neighbor.
There is love in you. Love of God the Father was poured out in your heart by the Holy Spirit that gave it to you. If this love is not manifested it is because the forces of death, they will weigh down over someone and suffocate him. The Lord wants to remove these forces of death and make you return to experience his love.
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, catholicismanew, Jonas Abib, love of God, newsongtv, prayer, stbenedictsomerville
The word of this day is for choosing the peace that comes from the Lord, fruit of the Holy Spirit, it is a promise of God for us, and we need to be conscious of this. The first question that we may be able to make is this. How are we going to acquire this peace, if it takes so much time that this peace has not visited us. Will it be, perhaps, that God failed at his promise?
The miracle always will be two way. God does his part but we need to do ours. 50% of a miracle that we may truly have peace is through going to the Lord of peace. Peace is not a fruit that comes perhaps but it is the fruit of intimacy with the Lord.
Jesus teaches us the sharing of his life that we need to immerse our life in the profound intimacy with God. Peace never comes from outside, but from inside. The Lord is inside of our heart, He lives in the place most intimate and there in the personal encounter with Jesus. In this intimacy of love that He comes to give peace.
Peace is not the absence of suffering. No, it is that we do not have to fight anymore. How can we hope for something in this world if our happiness is in eternity. Peace signifies that in the middle of sufferings and tribulations, we understand that the Lord of our life is Jesus.
We need to live in intimacy the example of Jesus who passed the entire night in prayer that we may leave the way of our life and climb the mountain, leaving he Lords of our life that our problems often become, to the Lord who brings us peace out of the pain of this life.
Father Marcos Pacheco
Canção Nova Community
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, Fr. Marcos Pacheco, holy Spirit, New Song Community, newsongtv, prayer
Today we see Saul’s expression that he wanted to kill David. The people had asked for a king. Their king is God, but they wanted a king and the Lord gave them a king. Saul he was the first, but he was deceiving God. The Lord resolved to choose a new king, that would be David, but he could only become king after the death of Saul. Then he began a very strong persecution against David because envy began to take control of his heart. Envy is a capital sin and if the people to not take care, this evil becomes sin and then grows into hatred.
Saul wanted to kill David because the envy became hatred. David had the opportunity of killing Saul, but he did not do this, because he had purity in his heart. It was not simply because he was anointed by the Lord that he did not want to kill, but because he was a son of God.
Evil is not in me, it was David himself who said this. We cannot desire evil to happen to another. There are many people who want vengeance and this does not come from the Gospel. David fought against evil that was inside of him. He fought against the evil tendency inside of him that wanted vengeance.
Hatred does not kill the other, it kills the person that is with it. It kills the heart. Hatred kills the only solution: which is to not feed it, but to do good. This kills hatred.
“In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel 
brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4, 3-7 NIV)
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People always have to make this question: “Why do I have this rage?” It is not necessary to be full of rage because the evil is not in the other and not in you. If you do not do good, the evil will remain, however, knocking at your door. We cannot allow this take hold of us. Run from it, do not let it dominate you. The evil cannot dominate you. Repeat, do good.
We need always to see through Calvary and we need to see it as the best manifestation of love, the best good that someone already does through us. The Lord spilled His Blood for us. Who has to be inside of us: Jesus and not the demon.
We are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Dominate this hatred, do not allow it to control you.
It fits God that this person who because of envy of you grows in hatred, has an encounter God, therefore do not fit yourself to vengeance. Ask the Lord that He does not allow this evil to dominate you.
The Christian is the fool of the world, because all come calling him the fool as you do not want to avenge yourself. Jesus was called the fool when he was brought to the cross. Likewise we too are fools. We are fools that are going to conquer with the Reign of Heaven and we are not going to allow such foolishness as hatred throw us from the way of the Lord.
Homily of Fr. José Augusto
Missionary of the New Song Community.
Translated from Portuguese
Tags: Canção Nova, cancaonova, David, holy Spirit, New Song Community, newsongtv, Pe Jose Augusto, prayer, Saul