Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Today's gospel tells us about the role of St. John the Baptist. The Jews from Jerusalem sent to him priests and Levites to ask him who he was. This is the question we all need to ask ourselves. Who are we? Who am I? John identified himself to be only an instrument of God. He was not the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah. He was sent ahead of the Christ to prepare for His coming. Thus, we need...

The Church celebrates the first day of the new year 2025 with the highest title of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is the Mother of God. The simple syllogism goes: Mary is the mother of Jesus; Jesus is God; therefore, Mary is the mother of God! Because of this dignity and stature, God adorned her soul with the highest gifts of faith, hope, charity, the supernatural cardinal and human virtues, the gif...

At last, we have arrived at the last day of the year. We are to transition to the first day of the new year. Praise God! With this passage, we are awarded a new lease in time. Imagine the scenario of having no time. Gosh! We would stop! But with time, we can still change for the better and correct our mistakes in 2024. The new year ushers us forward with lots of hope! That hope is rooted in our Sa...

We read today about Anna, the prophetess, in the gospel. Her figure and example would spur us on regarding how to spend these days of the Christmas season. We may learn from her sanctifying herself, staying in the temple most of the time helping out there. For most of us, our temple would be the one we attend every Sunday and holiday of obligation. But for the rest of the week, we convert wherever...

We celebrate today the way God wanted His only-begotten Son to enter human reality. It was through the family that He wanted Him born and raised and prepared for His Mission on earth, i.e., to die on the Cross for our sins. The family, therefore, is so important in God's design of society. Each person is best born and raised in the presence of both parents and siblings, if God gives them. Life is...

No one would like to be deceived. Perhaps we are more prone to fool the others, but nobody wants to suffer that. This happened especially to Herod the Great. Thus, we celebrate today Holy Innocents' Day because Herod got so mad that he ordered, as the monster he was, the slaughter of all male babies 2 years and under in Bethlehem. We can learn a lot from those infants. They served God in silence a...

We celebrate today the feast of St. John, the Apostle, and Evangelist. He is the human author and instrument of the Holy Spirit in writing the fourth gospel. He was the youngest of the Lord's close followers. He was the only apostle at the foot of the cross. We admire him especially for this, since he gave his heart to God from a young age. His vocation was properly speaking a celibate one. He did...

Right after Christmas, we recall the cruel martyrdom of St. Stephen. He was stoned to death after a confrontation with the Jews. He was one of the deacons who were chosen to help the apostles in taking care of those in need so that the apostles could focus on preaching and the administration of the sacraments. The example of St. Stephen is astonishing. One of those who approved of the stoning was...

At last, Jesus, the Savior, the Messiah, has been born! Hidden and unannounced in some poor stable in Bethlehem. The center of the universe was focused on this point in space and time. The foremost figure of human history graces our history and geography with His divine Presence. Not too many people learned about His birth. First, there were some shepherds nearby resting for their duties. They wer...

We are at last so close to Christmas! Jesus will be born in a few hours. Surely, He would like to be received in each of our hearts. Shall we repeat the rejection Mary and Joseph got when there was no room at the inn? Or, are we going to prepare as best as we can so that the Baby will be as comfortable as possible. May the divine Baby find all in order in our souls. Otherwise, we offer Him the con...

St. Matthew's begins his gospel with the genealogy of Jesus Christ. Actually, it was of Joseph, His foster father. The evangelist had to connect Jesus to our original parents, Adam and Eve. Then, he had to establish His ancestry to King David. First, the Savior had to be a valid representative of the human race. Thus, He should originate from Adam. He could therefore pay the price of sin, since ma...

The gospel today tells us of the main difficulty against a good preparation for the coming of the Lord on Christmas Day and, therefore, against the best readiness to welcome the second coming of Jesus Christ. It is not insincerity and lack of love for the truth. They demanded from Our Lord to divulge the authority He did the things He was doing. Our dear Jesus replied by asking first a question. W...

The Liturgy of the Word continues to keep us on our toes, looking forward to a certain coming of someone else. Some had thought that St. John the Baptist was the Christ already. However, St. John spares no effort to clarify that he was not the Messiah. He did that by fostering in his listeners a certain hope for still another one, who would be much greater than him. In the meantime, we continue to...

The gospel today sums up quite accurately the response God gets from man to His overtures of love and salvation. Jesus laments about their deafness. Actually, He is disappointed by our deafness to the signs of His love and invitation to love Him in return. To His invites to repent, we postpone doing something about it. We come up with excuses of some sort to avoid committing ourselves to do His Wi...

The Virgin Mary of Guadalupe addressed those words to Juan Diego to assure him his uncle would be safe. She took care of that matter so that Juan could proceed to follow her instructions to gather the proof to convince the local bishop to build a church at her request. Juan gathered those flowers blooming in plain desert. She arranged them in his tilma and asked him to show this only to the bishop...

I recall in a neighborhood there was a big house with its obviously wealthier occupants. We all wanted to make friends with the children of that family. Imagine being able to enter and make use of the facilities in their large dwelling, namely, swimming pool, billiard table, pingpong table, and so forth. This rich neighbor is our Lord Jesus. He extends this invite to us to go to Him. I would drop...

God promised a redeemer right after our first parents' fall. But He did not forget to indicate that the Redeemer would be born of a woman. As it turned out, the Redeemer was God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and thus, the woman who gave birth to Him was the Mother of God. She was immaculate since the very moment of conception because God had said that she, along with her divine Son, w...

Who are the little ones? They are those who step on their pride that tempts them to be hurt when corrected and to lose hope when they are not in control of things. We need to be little to attract the saving power of Jesus. Heaven belongs to the little children He declared one time. Hence, we need to practice this being little. We can take advantage of occasions when we could learn more, need help...

We celebrate today the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. We celebrate and praise and thank God for this singular miracle and grace. She was created and conceived without sin because of what she was destined to become, i.e., the mother of God. No less that the second Person of the Blessed Trinity would inhabit her womb. She could not have any stain of original sin or actual personal sin, even...

Today, the second Sunday of Advent, we are provided an essential aspect of our preparation for the birth of the Lord, and for His second coming. That is repentance. God sent John the Baptist to announce this as the proximate preparation for the coming of the Messiah. Repentance is the way. We need to adopt this way in our daily life: examination of conscience, daily, monthly and annually, and freq...

Remember we are preparing for Christmas and for the second coming of the Lord Jesus. The gospel tells us that the Lord cured every disease and illness of the crowds. Wouldn't that be what the Lord would be doing when He comes again to judge the living and the dead? We don't need to be afraid of Him because we are empty-handed, so to speak. As long as we are like children, repentant, and sorry for...

We gather at least a couple of things from today's gospel. First, the Lord shows us the need to actualize our faith in Him each time He makes us sort of wait before He acts on our petitions. Second, we have the basic format of each of the seven sacraments of the Church. First, each sacrament has a matter, and some action to perform to effect the sacrament. Then, the minister utters some words indi...

The Lord reveals to us in the gospel of today's mass the key needed to enter Heaven. It is not enough to be sincere, kind, good-natured, helpful, etc. We need to have the key. That key is to act on the Will of God. Without having executing that will into acts, then we will be locked out of our heavenly home. We are supposed to be inside our homes. But we would be prevented from entering because of...

A sign of the coming of the Messiah or the Anointed One or Redeemer is that He heals infirmities and feeds the hungry. Hence, crowds followed Him. We should find ourselves among those crowds, even though we are separated from the facts of the gospel by 20 or 21 centuries. What jars at our being is a lie. What troubles us is our fleeing the truth. Our being is undermined by our tendency to buy into...

The Lord points out today the importance of the Holy Spirit in the gospel of the mass. Sensitivity and openness to Him and His inspirations are essential elements in preparing for the Lord's coming. Look at what happened during the first coming. No one came to see the newborn Baby, except those simple shepherds and wise men from the East. Will this be the same during the second coming? We need to...