Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

God is the Hound of Heaven. The analogy comes from a breed of dogs, legendary for their ability to look for items or persons because of their keen ability of smell. God keeps on searching for all of us till we heed Him and return to Him. He does so in so many ways, like when we are captivated by beauty, good, the rottenness of evil, etc.

Jesus resurrects this man to return him alive and well to his widowed mother. It is because of compassion that He did so.

The Church directs our attention today to the Mother of Jesus at the foot of the Cross. Because of what was happening to her Son she also suffered. The gospel brings us to reflect on the fourth Joyful Mystery of the Holy Rosary. There was this old man Simeon who prophesied about the Baby Jesus and His Mother.

Today, the Church reminds us about the Cross of Jesus Christ. It was the instrument He employed to save mankind from sin and death. From His death, Resurrection, and Ascension, we receive all the graces needed to help us get to Heaven. Hence, we appreciate the importance of the Cross as a ladder to climb to eternal life with the Blessed Trinity. Jesus converted this ancient symbol of torture, deat...

Our Lord calls each of us to seriousness in following Him. During His life here on earth, He constantly called out the hypocrites among the Jews who were shallow in their religious practice. Calling on the Lord is not enough. Knowing the Lord in His teachings is not enough. They won't do, until we practice what we know.

Today, the Holy Mother Church encourages us to call upon the Blessed Virgin Mary by using her name Mary much more. Let us call her, asking for help and her protection. Our problem is that we rely more on ourselves and our strengths. We imitate young teenagers who are embarrassed by their friends because of the presence of their moms when they go to school. We hate their teasing us because we look...

Our actions have great consequences. One of them is that they give us an indication of how we will be treated in return. This requires us to be more personally responsible for them.

Perhaps what we could learn from our Muslim brethren, who are so radical that some are willing to blow themselves up with so many others as suicide bombers. What motivates them to go to such extremes? The carnal reward that is promised to them! While this arrangement and assumption is antithetical with real religion, what we could learn to do is to think more of the reward God has in store for us....

Our Lord in the gospel chooses His Apostles. All of them deserted Him when He most needed them. One of them betrayed Him and committed suicide. What do these details have to do with us, modern apostles of His?

Let us celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary!

There is no such thing as Christianity Lite or Catholicism Lite. Jesus makes it clear in the gospel of today's mass.

Today, we listen to a familiar story of the New Testament about a discussion between Jesus and the Pharisees. This latter group questioned the lawfulness of Jesus' disciples picking and eating grain on a Sabbath. They characterized the action as unlawful. Jesus ended the argument by saying that He is Lord of the Sabbath. He is the Law's Author and therefore the authority to interpret the L...

Today, we are given the opportunity to check how we practice fasting according to Catholic tradition. This ascetical means is not to be limited to matters of food and drink, but to all kinds of tendencies we easily indulge in, like worrying, being pessimistic, complaining, saying hurtful words to the others, vengefulness, etc.

Today, the Lord calls us like He did in the gospel. He called Simon, whom He renamed Cephas, Andrew, Simon's brother, and James and his brother John, all of them fishermen. With the miraculous catch of fish, Simon sees himself unworthy because he was a sinner. All the same, Jesus confirms his choice. He encourages us not to fear. He is greater than any sinfulness. We only need to trust Him.

Today, Jesus reaches out to people. However, when we try to find a place where He could rest, the people continue looking for Him. This behavior is what we need to emulate and foster throughout the day: in happy times and in sad times, when we feel we are at the top of the world and when we feel we are at the bottom, etc.

Since we are in the business of dealing with God, we need to read Him correctly. But we go about this in exactly the way we look at Him. If we look at Him like the demon does in the gospel today--that is, he is fearful that God would destroy him--we should understand that that is because of his bad dispositions. His dispositions basically are described best by saying that he wants to displace or r...

Many times we are baffled by the presence of evil. If God exists, why does evil exist? It is obvious that there is another source to account for evil and that is created freedom. Anyhow, Jesus in the gospel today reads an ancient text of sacred scriptures in the synagogue of Nazareth where it was prophesied what the Messiah would do when he does come. Jesus reads those deeds in book of Isaiah. He...

One of the greatest temptations we may get in this life and one of the greatest successes of the demon is to have convinced some of us that we need to focus only on this life here on earth, i.e., we should live thinking only of the success of this present life. Forget about the future life, i.e., eternal life in Heaven or Hell. The Lord in the gospel tries to dispel this shortsighted outlook.

We read about the famous parable of the talents that Jesus speaks to us today in the gospel of the mass. Believe it or not, these talents provide us with certain hope to reach Heaven.

The Lord criticizes the hypocrisy of the scribes and pharisees because they were more concerned about demanding from the people great fidelity to God and His injunctions. They, however, let themselves off any responsibility to follow those same demands. So, Jesus, condemns such superficiality in their religious practice. Hence, He tells the people to listen to what their religious leaders teach an...

The gospel today tells us about another parable of Jesus where He teaches us about the Last Things, namely, heaven, hell, death, judgment. Jesus portrays heaven as a wedding feast. Our being to go to heaven is shown as the invite the king extends to his guests to attend his son's wedding. The story describes the reception of such an invitation. Find out what that is for we are all invited by God t...

Today, the Lord makes it plain to us that he demands from us everything and that we trust Him absolutely. We cannot serve God and Mammon at the same time. We cannot have our cake and eat it!

We expound today a couple of Virtues needed for another living together with the others, namely, gentleness and Flexibility. We do so in the context of the young man's question to Jesus narrated in today's gospel.

The title to today's homily points out the Lord's words declaring to us that we need to reach peace through struggle to do all the good that we are capable of doing. I emphasize that we are not here in this world simply to fight against temptations to commit sin. We need to do better than that. We are supposed to struggle also to do all the good that we can do. Hence, many of our sins involves sin...

Today, the Church proposes for our consideration Jesus' teachings about becoming like a child in order to belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. This carries certain consequences in how we live our lives as adult Christians. Listen to the homily.