Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Today we celebrate a solemnity about the Blessed Virgin Mary being assumed into Heaven. Among other things, this goes to show how much dignity there is in a female, in a woman, in a daughter of God, and in this particular case, in the Mother of God.

We shouldn't just treat God as way of expression in whatever way we want. He is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is transcendent and here with us at the same time. He is not a part of the universe. He is the God we need to adore, praise, ask pardon from, thank and ask from for absolutely everything. How much is God a God to us?

The first reading of today's mass of the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time tells us of Elijah's change of heart regarding his mission. All he needed was an experience of contact with God. He was fleeing from persecution and he reached Mount Horeb. There was an earthquake, fire and wind but God was not in any of them. Then there was a gentle breeze and Elijah got his fill that led him to return...

The Jews had the practice of reciting the Shema three times a day. This was logical since we in our love for God although theoretically certain in practice we forget it or go about our activities having a different idea in mind or a different love that we aim at. The recital of the Shema or in the Catholic custom the morning offering could help us keep ourselves straight and sure towards God. The...

Relative to having this relationship with Christ, that would have infinite value, everything else that may be valued here on earth would assume a lesser value. St. Paul employs a very strong word. He compared these to rubbish. That is how much he prized knowing Jesus Christ. Thus we can examine how goes our relationship with Christ and especially how we keep up in knowing him. Do you need to do so...

God loves a cheerful giver, says St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. This is a basic Christian principle. We cannot behave with God as like what we do to our parents when we begrudgingly do what they ask us to do in the house because we don't like what they were told to do. Do we pout after being requested to do something? When asked to do some errands for them do we get moody an...

God's goodness is seen in His caring for us by appointing instruments to help us discern God's Will.

The First Reading of today's mass brings us to contemplate the complaining of the Israelites because of the difficulties of the journey to the Promised Land.

St. John Mary Vianney was a man of great penance and sacrifice. He asked the Blessed Sacrament during a Benediction that he'd accept all the sacrifices that He would send him for the conversion of his parish. The first reading of the mass tells us of the concept of the Jubilee in Israel. With the Jubilee we should recall we have received gifts from the Lord and that we need to share that with...

Moses built the Tent of the Covenant by following the instruction s of God to the letter. This is also how we need to approach the will of God. We need to listen to it and obey it. But there are also some things that God wants us to use our God given talents especially our spiritual faculties to choose what we would like to do, always being within the wide road that God grants us leeway.

St. Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that he encourages us to imitate him since he also imitates Christ. If he does not try to imitate Our Lord his moral authority over the people would practically disappear.

The three readings in the mass today show us this importance. Solomon asked for the ability to distinguish good and evil. In the second reading St. Paul tells us to ask to be saved. The Gospel tells us to ask that God give us the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field, i.e., the discernment of what God wants us to do in this world and for which God created us.

God did so to make it easier for us to know what we needed to do to do good and avoid evil. As the situation of man was debilitated because of original sin, man needed assistance to know accurately God's Will in the Decalogue. Without this aid man would have tended to commit errors in getting to know God's laws, not everyone would be talented enough and have the necessary time to analyze h...

God saves His people and He fights for them.

It is such an important revelation about who God is when in the first reading of today's mass for the 16th Week in Ordinary Time tells us that God offers us forgiveness as long as we repent of our sins. He is ever ready to forgive us.

God does not forsake his chose people. He sends Moses as his instrument. As usual when God chooses someone, that someone brings up an objection. But God prevails by saying He will accompany Moses.

The story of how Moses was born, the circumstances he was born in and how he survives as a baby and becoming the son of Pharaoh's daughter is illustrative of God intervening in our world.

God's omnipotence means that His Will is uncontested in the universe. No creature can resist His all powerful Will. However, His only weakness is a created will like us and the fallen angels who can elect to be proud and disobedient. But even then God power accomplishes its purpose especially because He can get good from evil.

We need this virtue to counteract the root cause of our pride and disobedience to God's Will.

The preparation we have been undertaking these days with the first readings of the masses include the understanding that although our Lord does not need any of us to accomplish His Will, He has wanted to count on our contribution, our free correspondence to His divine inspiration and action in our souls. What a privilege! Thanks be to God that He has wanted to depend on us also!

This is staple in the Christian conscience. When a problem is observed or suffered by a Christian he or she strives to--at least in theory--to see what could be done about it, not by someone else--although that may be possible--but by the one who notices such problem. One tries to see that he is called by God to address the issue and to do something about it. When there is a crisis in the Church a...

What we usually do is to listen to ourselves. Worse, we just say immediately what we think. This leads to many errors and mistakes especially against charity. Human prudence requires us to at least think first and even better for Christians to listen to the Holy Spirit. You cannot go wrong in doing this. What might be problematic is to discern what He actually says. In any case, if we pursue this...

We depend on their witness of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The doubting Thomas was praised by Jesus because he saw Him and touched His Wounds. But Jesus praised all those who would come afterwards who without seeing Him or touching His Wounds, we would believe. We depend on that witness. This explains why the Apostles preached a lot the Resurrection. It became the...

That is it! Suffering has meaning. We will see this in how the Apostles take their flogging and humiliation in front of the Sanhedrin for the miracle of curing a crippled man.

We begin the season on Lent in the Catholic Church. We recall that the Church helps us to contemplate and incarnate the life of Jesus Christ. So she brings us through the various phases of his life. We began with His birth by preparing for it with the Advent Season. We then contemplated Jesus in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, delivered when the fullness of time arrived, His infancy, His chil...