Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

The gospel today addresses these two very important questions, namely, eternal life and the identity of our neighbor. Let us be open to the words of Jesus so we could adopt whatever measure or make necessary adjustments in our lives to incorporate Jesus' commands in our circumstances.

Be not afraid! We address those bad fears in today's gospel!

The Lords sees us all as sheep without a shepherd. We tend to be defenseless when facing the enemies of our soul, especially the devil and his two allies, namely, worldliness and our fallen nature. Hence, He reveals to us today that He is the shepherd of us sheep. We might fall prey to deceptions and lies the devil expertly spreads around disguised as ideologies, wokeness, materialism and consumer...

The Lord asks us to be generous since He has been generous with us. His gifts are totally gratuitous. He was never obliged to give us anything, least of all to award us the gift of existing and is that of being destined to be with Him for eternity. The reality is obvious, namely, that He has given us so many things that we absolutely do not deserve having and that we are totally obliged to be than...

Being summoned by God is something we need to get used to. Today's gospel particularly illustrates this. Jesus called some of his disciples and sent them as His apostles. He calls us all the time because He is always in touch with us. Our problem is that we are not disposed well enough to be sensitive to His summons consciously. We are His creatures. In man's case, each man is specifically and ind...

Haven't you experienced those moments when you felt that you needed help, or you had questions, or felt that you needed to accept or acknowledge responsibility for something, etc? We all have gone through them. We actually continue to experience those occasions when we omitted to say something when we should have. The gospel reveals to us today the existence of kinds of devils. Today, we are intro...

Our relationship with God boils down to trusting Him. The gospel today provides us two miracles-both happening to women-where trust in Jesus is highlighted. Explore this in the homily.

Today, the Lord tells us about our role in the Church. We are like ambassadors of Christ. We are the face of Christ to the others. They will be attracted or repelled by Christ depending on each of us showing the face of Christ to them.

The gospel today sends us to contemplate Jesus explaining to the Jews the reason why His disciples did not fast just like them. They were proud about themselves being able to fast so much, such that they were critical of Jesus' followers who did not fast. Jesus clarified that He was still around. Only when He is gone when He dies on the Cross will they begin to fast. But as it is, He was still wit...

Jesus is Saviour. Hence, He came looking for sinners, like you and I. We should approach Him with confidence and simplicity. We should accept that we are sinners. We are not past sinners. We are sinners now. Hence, we need the doctor to help us heal.

We need to live our Faith, not only saying it or reciting some formula. We need to struggle to live according to its demands.

Our Lord in today's gospel shows us how much He values man and his salvation relative to the swine that were in the area. The thing is the demons asked Him that they move to the swine. After He gave them leave, they entered the pigs and rushed them over the cliff to drown in the sea. The swineherds relayed this story to the villagers who naturally did not like what Jesus did. So, they asked Him to...

Lord, save us! That was how the disciples woke Jesus up in the midst of that raging storm. What could you expect them to do? The waves were swamping the boat that they feared for their lives. Jesus got up without any care in the world. This is peanuts! Anyhow, He rebuked those forces of nature and everything returned to calmness. He addressed them criticizing their little faith. We should admit to...

Let us observe the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord. Since He is perfect man, His most attractive. People wanted to follow Him. But do you have what it requires to follow Him?

We celebrate today two of the greatest apostles of Jesus Christ. Their witness and example should spur us on also in loving Jesus with deeds, even when we are beset by personal weaknesses and sins. The Lord did not choose them because they were perfect or near perfect. They were weak, proud, and cowardly, but they took seriously their moment of conversion. They lived Jesus in return, even to the p...

After the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we now look into the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I recall from my teenage years what the adults called dirty, like dirty jokes, dirty pictures, dirty movies, etc. I wondered what was dirty. Was it sex? Was it something related to the marital embrace? Was it about the human body, or the female body? Anyhow, I found out later that what was dirty was not what God design...

Today, the Church wants us to know the Heart of Jesus! It is Valentine's Day between God and Man, Man collectively, but especially man in particular, i.e., each one of us. Indeed, God wants to have a personal relationship with each one of us. Explore the Sacred Heart of Jesus as we can appreciate in the gospel of today's mass.

Let us not kid ourselves. Today's gospel only reinforces our conviction about the fact that we can be led astray by deceitful people. Adam and Eve's experience with the serpent continues nowadays. Satan is always on the prowl looking for fresh victims. Hence, our dear Lord Jesus Christ asks us to beware of false prophets. These latter can come nowadays to our homes and bedrooms because of TV, movi...

We celebrate the birthday of St. John the Baptist. Discover the reasons we do this in the Catholic Church. Aside from his birthday, we also celebrate those of the Blessed Virgin Mary and of Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ. What makes this cousin of Jesus significant?

It is good policy to check ourselves in the mirror during the day. We do have a good image of physical selves but we need to verify and check whether that is actually the case. If we do this with respect to our physical selves, we also need to do this with respect to our heart and souls. We may have a false and erroneous idea of ourselves. This happens also in the way we judge others.

We celebrate today the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We give witness to the world of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist. Hidden under the appearance of bread and wine is the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of the Second Person of the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity. Jesus is truly Emmanuel, God with us, I our Tabernacles.

We cannot serve two masters. Jesus n tells us so much. But He does not only mean that we follow and obey Him. He also means that we trust HIM. Our trust in Him is tested all the time. The devil only wants us to distrust Him. That's how he got our first parents to sin.

Where does your heart go during the day? What consumes your heart as you go about your day? Jesus wants us to examine ourselves to answer these questions derived from the gospel today. In theory, that center where our heart should revolve around is God. Is it? Or is it a creature or creatures that we have decided to be worth giving up our hearts to?

Our Lord teaches us today how we are to pray. We need to underscore that Jesus teaches us HOW we are to connect with God. Perhaps we do not need to say this prayer all the time, but we have here the model and pattern of HOW we need to pay. Hence, we have here the absolute elements of prayer.

Let us take care of our personal formation, where we strive to go for real work on acquiring virtues, rather than being satisfied with a mere image or reputation. We might fall into the trap so rampant nowadays of being superficial in improving ourselves. Let us not only look good. Let us be good! Let us be truthful, rather than be satisfied with getting the news out first without having verified...