by Father Nnamdi Moneme | January 16, 2025 1:00 am
“This love and grace are offered to us in each Eucharist. Let us also live as God’s children, offering ourselves to God like Jesus did and in union with Him at each Holy Mass. Then we shall know that His love and grace are indeed enough for us.”
We prayed the Suscipe prayer attributed to St. Ignatius of Loyola together after each Holy Mass in our seminary. This prayer after Holy Communion was our way of offering ourselves to Jesus who had just offered Himself to us at Mass. I always marveled at the last words of this powerful prayer:
“Your love and your grace are wealth enough for me. Give me this, Lord Jesus, and I will ask for nothing more.”
Were these mere words on our lips? Can God’s grace and love truly be wealth enough for us that we are ready to lose all other things? Is it possible to offer all to God – our freedom, memory, understanding, will, and all that we have and cherish – and settle for His love and grace alone?
The Baptism of Jesus shows us that indeed God’s love and grace are all that we need in this life and we can lose all things for the sake of having His love and grace within us. His love will surely provide all for us just as His grace will surely guide and sustain us.
Two things happened when Jesus was baptized. Firstly, the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended on Him in the form of a dove, further filling His humanity with the grace of God. Secondly, the Father exclaimed and affirmed Jesus as His truly beloved son, “You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”(Lk 3:21-22) Jesus powerfully experienced a visible overflow of God’s love and grace at His baptism.
This love and grace were enough for Jesus to fulfill His mission here on earth of doing good to others, delivering all from the bondage of Satan, and journeying to His ultimate sacrifice on Calvary. St. Peter attested to the power of divine love and grace in the life of Jesus after His baptism, “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power and He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.”(Acts 10:38)
We too will find that God’s love and grace are enough for us if we do the following things:
Begin to live as God’s beloved children.
Jesus lived as the Father’s beloved Son, completely dependent on the Father for everything, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing on His own accord, but only what He sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does likewise.”(Jn 5:19) He received baptism in complete obedience and dependence on His Father.
We live as God’s beloved children when we are firm in faith, joyful in hope, and active in charity. We do not live worldly lives because Jesus “gave Himself for us to deliver us from all lawlessness and to cleanse for Himself a people as his own, eager to do what is good.”(Ti 2:14) We experience the sufficiency of divine grace and truth only when we begin to live as God’s children.
We make constant effort to please God by doing His will.
The Father praised Jesus as His Son even before Jesus had preached a single sermon or worked a miracle. He had not even begun His public mission. He simply received baptism from St. John the Baptist.
In the same way, we see how sufficient God’s love and grace are when we sincerely make effort to please God no matter the results that we achieve. God does not look at the results we attain or how grand our actions are. He considers the love and intention behind our actions above all things. He affirms and pours out His graces on us when He sees this sincere effort to please Him by doing His will.
We humbly accept all that God is offering to us.
Jesus humbly accepted to be baptized by the Baptist even if He did not need this baptism. He forever possesses the fullness of divinity, “For in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.”(Col 2:9) Yet He humbly accepted to stand in line with sinners to receive the baptism as if he had also sinned.
We too open ourselves to receive the grace and love of God when we humbly accept all that God is offering us for our mission in life. We accept the fullness of the word of God even if it moves us out of our comfort zone. We do not pick and choose the teachings of the Church that we can accept or reject. We accept the seven sacraments instituted by Jesus Christ without questioning our need for any of them, especially the sacrament of reconciliation.
We seek to grow in our relationship with God.
We are told that Jesus was praying shortly after He was baptized. He prayed as a beloved Son to experience the love of the Father in His humanity and to return the Father’s love. He would devote large amounts of time in prayer during His earthly ministry to show how He put His relationship with the Father above and beyond His success in ministry. This fervent prayer disposed Him to receive the love and grace of the Father.
We too should grow in our relationship with God by praying like Jesus. How can we experience the affirmation and love of the Father and His grace when we are not serious in our prayer life? We too should pray for the sake of deeper relationship with God and not just to get favorable results.
My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, it is so easy for us to think that we need so many things in this life for our fidelity to the mission that God has entrusted to us in baptism. If we have everything but lack the love and grace of God, there is no way that we can fulfill our mission for a single day.
This love and grace are offered to us in each Eucharist. Let us also live as God’s children, offering ourselves to God like Jesus did and in union with Him at each Holy Mass. Then we shall know that His love and grace are indeed enough for us.
Glory to Jesus!!! Honor to Mary!!!
Image credit: Photo by Matea Gregg[1] on Unsplash[2]
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About the author:
Fr. Nnamdi Moneme, OMV, is a Roman Catholic priest and religious of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary currently serving in the Philippines. He teaches theology and is a seminary formator for candidates to the priesthood and religious life. Father also gives Ignatian retreats and serves as spiritual director to many of the lay, religious, and clergy in the area.
He earned his first degree in Physics from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria. Ordained in 2009, he studied at St. John’s seminary, in Brighton, Massachusetts. Father has an STL/MA in Moral Theology from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines.
Father Moneme blogs at https://toquenchhisthirst.wordpress.com/[3].
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