Congregation at Prayer

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Who Could Stand before the Lord if He Kept a Record of Sins? — “If the Lord held us accountable for our sins and kept a record of them, we would all be condemned and have no hope of salvation. But in Christ there is forgiveness for all sin that we might ‘fear, love, and trust in Him.’ The broken and contrite heart does not rely upon anything that it does for salvation but trusts only in Christ’s Word. To ‘wait for the Lord’ is to believe in Jesus and to look nowhere else for comfort for our troubled consciences or for the certainty of salvation but in His Word of forgiveness. Faith holds on to His Word of forgiveness, and from His Word alone it receives the blessed hope of salvation.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Editon, p. 242a]CP240204

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Let Him Deny Himself — This week’s verse is Jesus’ call to the baptismal life: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). “Self-denial is central to faith in Christ, and such self-denial is the denial that a person’s own good works can in any way save him. It is God who works ‘daily contrition and repentance’ in us through His Word of Law and Gospel, so that we deny ourselves and our own righteousness and cling by faith to Christ alone for salvation. ‘Daily contrition and repentance’ is painful to us because it involves the killing of the flesh with all the appetites and desires of the Old Adam. As Christ suffered and died for our sin, so we who are joined to Christ by Baptism into His death die daily to self that we might walk in the new life of faith in Christ. The Law continually kills—crushing all our religious hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and pride; and the Gospel continually makes us alive—reviving repentant faith, comforting the troubled conscience, and giving us the strength to live in the freedom and joy of Christ’s forgiveness.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 230b]CP240128

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Baptism Places Us in Christ – “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation…” Holy Baptism places us IN Christ! This means that we are joined to Him. His death for sin has become our death for sin. His atonement for sin is our atonement. His righteousness covers our sin. His resurrection has become our own. By His forgiveness, life, and salvation we are a NEW creation. The old life of sin and death has passed away. In Christ we are a NEW creation. This means that you are a new man or woman, holy and righteous. God looks upon you and you are spotless, without sin! Christ has taken it all away and declared you righteous. It means that you are a new man and a new woman, a new husband and a new wife, a new father and a new mother because the old things have passed away with all their frailty, sin, and corruption, and all things have become new! You are a new creation in Christ! This is the gift of our Baptism and what it means to be “IN Christ!”

CP240121

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Holy Baptism: The Sacrament of Salvation! “Jesus defines Holy Baptism as the new birth of water and the Spirit. This new birth is the miracle of faith in Christ. The Holy Sprit gives birth to faith in Christ through the seed of the Word of God that is implanted in the water. Faith in Christ and Holy Baptism are inseparable linked together as necessary for salvation. To say that Baptism is necessary for salvation is to say that Christ Jesus is necessary for salvation because He alone suffered and died for our sins, and He is the salvation given to us by the Holy Spirit in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. We cannot enter the kingdom of God apart from faith in Christ. “To be born” spiritually, therefore, is to be given the gift of faith in Christ. This gift of faith is born of water and the Spirit—Holy Baptism. Through the Word of God in Baptism, the Holy Spirit promises salvation in Christ and gives the gift of faith. Our sinful flesh can produce only sin and unbelief. But the Holy Spirit creates faith and declares us righteous for Jesus’ sake. This is why the Holy Spirit is called ‘the Lord and giver of life.” [Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 220a]CP240114

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Seventh Petition — “Rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation.” When we pray the Seventh Petition, “but deliver us from evil,” we might be tempted to conclude that we are asking that “evil” never rear its head in our lives. This misses the mark. Evil will come into our lives in the form of Satan’s attacks upon our “body and soul, possessions and reputation.” Holy Scripture makes this clear. We will not be spared from being attacked. God wills that the attacks of evil against us serve the cause of faith. “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you and you shall glorify Me.” Therefore, in the Seventh Petition we are asking that God would preserve our faith in Christ when we are assaulted by the Evil One, and teach us to commend ourselves—body, soul, and spirit, with all that we are and have—into His gracious keeping. The Word of our Lord teaches us that He will not forsake His own. If He allows evil to enter into our lives, then He does so for His good purposes and for the exercise of faith in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This petition promises the Christian: “God will not allow the Evil One or any adversity to overwhelm you.” By this petition He invites you to trust this promise and to call upon Him in your need. In this way faith in Christ is active.

CP240107

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Gloria in Excelsis — “The Gloria is the second of the five great pillars of the Divine Service. It is based on the song of the angels at the birth of Christ: ‘Glory be to God on high; and on earth peace, good will toward men.’ In the Divine Service, where our Lord Jesus Christ is truly present according to both His divine and human natures, there is no hymn that is more appropriate than the hymn that announces Immanuel—God with us! The song of the angels becomes our song in the Divine Service. In it we confess faith in Christ ‘who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man’ (Nicene Creed). His name is Jesus, “for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). This is God’s greatest glory!” (Lutheran Catechesis p. 95).CP231231

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Though He Was Rich, He Became Poor for Us — “Every Christian ‘knows the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’ because it is proclaimed to us in the Gospel. It is the pure, undeserved, sacrificial love of Jesus that moved Him to become one with our flesh and weakness, and to suffer and die for our sins. We know and believe in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ for our salvation. It is this grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that moved Him to do what he did for us—to become man, to humble Himself, to suffer and to die for the unworthy and the undeserving. Though he was “rich”—the holy, eternal, omnipotent Son of God who shared in the Father’s glory from eternity and through whom the Father made all things—yet for our sakes He became “poor.” This is love. He set aside His power and glory as the eternal Son of God and became man, humbling Himself to the point of bearing the sin of the whole world in His own body upon the cross and dying for us that we through His poverty…might become rich, partakers of His divine life. To become rich in Christ is to share eternally in the grace of God and to become partakers with Jesus of the immortal and incorruptible life that He won for us in His humiliation, suffering, and death.” (Excerpt from LC)CP231224

Catechesis Notes for the Week — The Seed of the Woman — “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15). “The suffering and death of the virgin-born Son of God, by which Satan would be robbed of his authority to condemn sinful man, is predicted by this riddle. This passage is often called the first promise of the Gospel. It promises redemption from the power of Satan (the serpent) by Jesus (the Seed of the Woman). How does one kill a serpent? By crushing its head. In the process, one’s heel is bruised. Jesus was bruised in His suffering and death, but by it He won the victory over Satan. The power of Satan was the power to condemn sinful man by the authority of God’s own word: “in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Since man rebelled and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Satan had authority from God’s command to demand man’s death and separation from God. The Seed of the Woman (the Son of God becomes man to suffer and die according to the word of judgment attached to the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thereby bruising (or crushing) the serpent’s head (or Satan’s authority to condemn). Satan entered the creation in the form of a serpent to deceive and destroy; the Son of God entered into creation in the form of man to suffer man’s death, redeem the creation, and reconcile man to God.” (Excerpt from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 86b)CP231217

Catechesis Notes for the Week — He Comes Like Lightening — “Lightning is swift and visible by all across the horizon. This is why Jesus compares His Second Coming to lightning. He will appear again suddenly, and all will see Him. He calls us to “be ready” through the hearing of His Word, in daily contrition and repentance, with faith fixed firmly upon Him, because He will come at an hour we do not expect. That no one knows the time of our Lord’s Second Coming highlights the fact that Christians are to live each day by repentant faith in Christ as if He could appear again at any moment.” (Excerpted from Lutheran Catechesis: Catechist Edition, p. 128b, used by permission)CP231210

Catechesis Notes for the Week — Advent means “coming.” It is the beginning of the Church Year. During Advent we “celebrate waiting.” No one likes to wait for what he really wants. As Christians we want to receive the full glory of our salvation in Christ our King. But we must wait. In a sense, Advent celebrates the cold, harsh, sober realities of life which we must endure before the resurrection of all flesh. We live in the time of faith’s struggle against the devil, the world, and our sinful nature. God’s promises are the strength of faith by which we endure the struggle until our Lord’s return. Advent, therefore, celebrates living in hope of the fulfillment of God’s promises. As we prepare to celebrate His coming in the flesh, we look forward with certainty to His coming again in glory, even as we enjoy His coming to us NOW in the Holy Gospel and Sacraments. This was the same faith to which the Patriarchs of old were called and they lived their life in this faith. That which they beheld by faith we have the privilege of partaking of in the Sacrament in the blessed hope of the resurrection.CP231203