Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Our Lord Jesus Christ prophesizes His own demise in the gospel of today. He does this via parable. The story is about a vineyard entrusted to certain tenants. After that, he goes on a journey. At the proper time, he sends some servants to collect the produce corresponding to him. But the tenants rebelled against him and did not recognize him as their master. They abused his servants. They did the...

The gospel assures us of the coming final reckoning. Recall perhaps those times when we saw evil sort of triumph in this life. There are those to be pitied because their just cause fell flat to the ground. Frustration and disappointment! Scandalous government and judiciary officials who do not perform them duties well. They all can be bought. As they say, everybody has a price! But the Good News o...

Top of the morning! Howdi! Today we celebrate St. Joseph, the Husband of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary and the Foster Father of Jesus Christ. He is the Universal Patron of the Catholic Church. I address him as my Father and Lord because he directed the Holy Family of Nazareth. Being the putative dad of Jesus he headed that home where God deigned to be the entry point of His only begotten Son, the S...

One of the funniest things in the Sacred Scriptures is Jesus calling out those who preach, but they do not practice what they preach. They impose on the others the burden of obeying the law that they themselves do not obey. That is funny, right? We need to be consistent with ourselves. We need to keep that unity in our lives--otherwise, it will be farce and, if we are teachers or in some kind of a...

The gospel emphasizes this demand of Jesus. He promises us that the way we treat others will be the way He will treat us. It is another formulation of the Golden Rule!

The Second Sunday of Lent provides us the gospel of what happened at the summit of Mount Tabor. Our Lord is famously transfigured. This happens in the presence of His three favorite apostles: Peter, James and his brother John. Our dear Jesus sought to enkindle their faith and strengthen their hope. This is so kind of Him to give them assurances that despite His coming suffering and death on the cr...

This is the ultimate challenge of Jesus to. How could we possible top God Himself? Jesus assured Peter in a previous gospel found in Matthew, that with God everything is possible. Jesus speaks to us about charity and love of neighbor in today's gospel. As we did in previous gospels, He elevates the demands of God's Law. Not only do actions against a commandment make us liable, we also need to incl...

Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ today nourishes our souls with other content of the monumental sermon on the mount. He cautions us about following the substandard requirements made by the scribes and Pharisees. He clearly demands that we surpass their low standards. Otherwise, we will be unable to make it to Heaven. Find out about Jesus' standards of Christian living as His followers.

The gospel of the mass today tells us an important attitude we need to learn and adopt as a way of living our faith. “"Ask and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” It is the stance of a child in need of help or something. Little...

Our exercise of our freedom in the wrong way that we can stop God. If we resist Him, we will succeed to be selfish and egoistic. God made us free. He ran the risk of our abusing our freedom. He gave us our freedom to love Him freely. It would not be genuine love if it was forced on us. But that same freedom can also bring us to hell, that is, if we reject Him! May we use our freedom well!

"Lord, teach us to Pray!" The followers of Christ had observed the Lord spending time and separating Himself from the others early in the morning to spend time to pray. He wants us to learn how to pray. Principally, it is the Holy Spirit who guides our prayer. We need to listen to Him. This is crucial. The Lord's followers had Him teach them how to pray. His instruction listed first that we should...

We receive a special revelation from God today in the gospel of the mass. Our creator identifies Himself with our neighbor, and not just any neighbor, but the least of our brothers or sisters. The “least” consist of those who do not measure up to our expectations. God, as they say, is found in the most unlikely of spots. We would expect Him to be in success, in the nice things of life, in victory,...

Good morning! Top of the morning! Howdi! Our gospel today is from Luke 5:27-32. It may surprise us but the message is that He calls us sinners to Himself. We need not write ourselves off because of our claim that we are sinners, or that we are terrible sinners, or that we have been original in our sins again any or all of of God's commandments. The devil is involved in any way we are dissuaded fro...

We appreciate from the Gospel today the imagery of a wedding feast that Jesus employs to illustrate why there was a certain difference in behavior between the Pharisees and Jesus' disciples. The matter was about fasting. The Jews fasted periodically, while Jesus' disciples did not fast. Jesus uses the wedding feast as the justification for His disciples' not fasting. Can they fast when the bridegr...

Top of the morning everyone! Howis it going? We can give thanks to God for the stable condition of PopeFrancis. There have been no emergency procedures needed. But continue prayingfor the pope. This is a good habit to develop. A new season in the Church kicksoff today. Lenten season opens with Ash Wednesday. We may encounter people witha faint dark sign of the cross marked on their foreheads. It i...

Today kicks off a new season in the Church called Lent. We spend about 5 weeks to prepare ourselves for Holy Week when we focus on the Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not a day of obligation. In the Philippines, many catholics flock to churches to get the mark of the cross on the forehead with ashes from the burned leaves of the palms used the previous Easter season...

Top of the morning everyone! Howdi! All the best! Today is Wednesday, 4 March 2025. I continue praying intensely for the Holy Father. He direly needs our prayers and sacrifices. In fact, if we are just a bit more loving for God in fulfilling our duties of state, I bet you so much that this will help in Pope Francis’ recovery. We have another rather brief gospel today. We read from Mark 10:28-31.“P...

Today is Thursday the 27th of March. The gospel brings us to Jesus pronouncing some of the strongest words He uttered here on Earth. Those words were directed those who give bad example or do harm to innocent ones. He said that it would be better to do something drastic so that we avoid what is evil so that Heaven would for us, instead of simply letting things be, but deserving of Hell.

St. John reported to Jesus that he found someone expelling demons like they did. they forbade him from doing so. Jesus corrects His apostle. He was not against us. He is actually for us. We are in the same team!

The Gospel today teaches us two things, at least. First, we should not fear asking Jesus about anything. Second, we need to struggle against vanity, pride and selfishness by becoming last seen in being of service to everyone.

The gospel today teaches us how to foster our faith by removing the obstacles to the reception of the grace of faith. A father of his possessed son asks Our dear Lord's disciples to liberate his suffering son from the mute devil within him. They find out that they could not. Our Lord arrives from the Mount Tabor excursion with His favorite apostles Peter, James, and John. He approaches the crowd f...

Today, we read about the exigent commandments of Jesus about loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, etc. The bottom line for this obligation is that God is the first in living up to them. In fact, if we refuse to follow Him in treating well those who mistreat us, then, we will also get the same treatment when He judges us.

We read today the text of St. Matthew's 16th chapter where we find Jesus changing Simon's name to Peter. Jesus reveals that He establishes a church what will be founded on Peter, the rock. Such a foundation will be so strong that hell will be unable to destroy it. What an awesome Church! We need to find this Church. If we are already children of this church, then we need to grow in it.

After the clarity of knowing the identification of Jesus by St. Peter--He is the Christ--, Peter hits the dirt. He chided our dear Lord for His prophecy regarding His suffering and death and return to life. Peter thought that suffering and the cross had no place in the plans of God. Jesus reprimanded him by calling him Satan and telling him to his face that his thoughts were not aligned with God's...

The last gospel texts and homilies had the common theme of blindness vs. clarity of sight. Today's gospel culminates this with the clarity of sight of Peter regarding who Jesus is. He declared, "You are the Christ." He was the Anointed One. He was sent by God to usher in the Messianic era. However, Peter could still grow in clarity in understanding the content of that messiahship. In fact, today's...