Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Our Lord says in so many words this lesson for us today in the gospel. Those who do evil have a certain style in doing that. We can learn from them in how they use technology, how they persevere doggedly in pursuing their terrible goals, how they work together to be united, etc. It is astonishing that of us who we may say work to spread God's Kingdom have quarrels among our ranks, envy of those wh...

Jesus aims at getting us all to repent of our sins. Only thus will we be open to His mercy and His mercy to be applied to our repentance. When there is no repentance, God's mercy will not work to forgive us of our sins and thus save us. What victory the devil achieves when he gets us to believe that we do not need repentance. That would mean that we did not sin and therefore are not sinners. Thus,...

Jesus explains today what is needed to be His disciple. He mentions that we must love Him above all, expressed in a visceral way. And the other requirement to make our love for Him stand out as the top priority is that we should be ready to carry our cross every day.

Our Lord warns us today in the gospel of the mass that our fortunes in this life may not be in the same way in the life afterward. Someone asks Our blessed Lord about whether only a few will be saved. Instead of answering the question, Jesus warns us that we need to try our best to be saved, for the door leading to that is narrow. What we achieve in this life may not indicate our fortune in the ne...

Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us today in the gospel of the mass important and interesting imageries for us to understand a little more about His Kingdom. He compares His Kingdom with the tiny mustard seed and minute yeast. But such small realities grow to be much bigger and beneficial for the others. The mustard seed grows into something much bigger whose branches could be used by the birds to re...

Our Lord chooses his apostles among His big pool of disciples. The list is mentioned in the gospel today. We celebrate the feast of two of them, namely, St. Jude Thaddeus and St. Simon the Zealot. Our Lord prepared for His selection by spending the previous night in prayer. One of the remarkable things that could be said about this narration is that Our Lord selected them to continue His work of s...

We meet Bartimaeus in the gospel today. He was a blind beggar in Jericho, and he caught wind of Jesus passing by. He shouted to get His attention. When he finally got it, Our Lord called for him. He asks Him to grant him back his sight. Our Lord granted it, but not only that. He assured him that his faith saved him.

Jesus opens to us this ocean of God's mercy in the gospel today. What He wants from us is to acknowledge our sins and repent from them. He forgives. He is even convinced by a gardener to let a fig tree one more year to accommodate it to bear fruit. God is merciful! But He needs our repentance first.

Jesus today offers us some practical examples to illustrate His teachings. He uses everyday examples to elucidate what He is trying to teach. Let us listen to them.

Today, the Lord tells us how much He would like a certain fire to be spread around the world. We may wonder what that fire was all about and about what it had to burn. Listen to some reflections about it.

The gospel today pounds again on the same message as in yesterday's gospel, namely, the idea of being ready. Today, it is that of being prepared for the one coming. The more important the person coming is, the more complex will the preparations be. If the One coming is going to meet us about our eternal destiny, then we need to be prepared in matters related to our salvation. Will we be ready to b...

Today, Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us to be ready all the time. That is because the devil is always on the prowl to get victims. He wants us to commit sin, even mortal sin, so that he can bring us to hell. We do not have to imagine grave sensational sins or crimes. It is so easy to be manipulated by him. He sends us ideas, images, memories, and so forth so we are hushed into silence and complicity...

Our Lord will call us this way when we are excessively concerned for material things and owning so much. He tells us the story in the gospel today about the man who enjoys a bumper harvest that his barns could not accommodate his goods. He destroys them and builds larger ones. When all is stored, he concludes that he could then pursue an easy life of eating and drinking. God called him a fool for...

That is what Jesus did when He became flesh and assumed our human nature. He was as human as we are, except having any sins. He became man so He could be useful in buying us back from the devil, who kidnapped us from the graces of God. The serpent succeeded in getting us to sin. We were members of Satan's kingdom. But God did not give up on us. He redeemed us. He got us back by being ransom for ou...

Our Lord is plain in the gospel today. He commits Himself to declare Himself for those who declare themselves for Christ in this life. Wow! What a great and loving God we have! Let us hear more about it!

Today is the feast of St. Luke, Evangelist. The Lord tells us in the gospel about His sending of the 72 disciples ahead of Him to evangelize the people they meet. He instructs them to hurry and to bring peace to them.

Jesus calls out the people who murdered the prophets sent by God. These instruments of God only transmitted what God wanted to be told to His people. Many times they did not like what they were called out about. Rare is the person who loves to be corrected. Pride and selfishness take the lead. People tend to have difficulty to leave their ways, especially when they have gained certain advantages a...

The Lord tell us in today's gospel His beef against the Pharisees and scribes or lawyers. They were meticulous about fulfilling the regulations they themselves imposed but neglected to fulfill the main law mandated by Moses. They added those little requirements with the hope that taking care of them, they would not neglect the weightier law of Moses. For instance, the Lord mentions in the gospel t...

We read today in the gospel of the holy mass about Jesus calling out the Pharisees who were so concerned about His having not washed His Hands before dining. Jesus made use of this occasion to illustrate their hypocrisy. They are focused on externals washings but their keep their hearts untouched and preserve the status quo. God wants the conviction and conversion of our hearts and not just be con...

Wisdom is to be sought after more than anything else in this life, according to the first reading of the mass today. The gospel puts this principle into live action. A young wealthy man was concerned about reaching eternal life. This is a wise concern. If he sought his existential purpose only in this life, this would be most unwise because we were made not for this world but for the next. We migh...

This was the loud cry that rang out the day as Jesus was speaking to the crowd. Obviously, she was awed by the words of the Son of Mary. We learn at least a couple of things from this brief gospel. First, we need to learn to improve our prayer by praising God. Second, we should have no problem in praising the mother of Jesus, since Jesus assented to this woman's kind words. On top of that, He adde...

The Lord today in the gospel shares with us His sad experience in some of the people. It must have been a frustrating one for Him. He just did a good deed, that is, He expelled a devil from possessing a man. The people interpreted it as Jesus using the devil himself to expels demons. That is funny! Jesus wrestles with them by mentioning the reasons they were wrong. Beware of jealousy when we inter...

Jesus reminds us in the gospel about a fundamental aspect of our prayer life. That is about petitions. We need to persevere and insist on what we petition for. We can ask for anything, as long as it is not evil or would be used for evil. Now, we need to ask ourselves whether we ask for we need to ask for, namely, for holiness, for the attainment of a certain Christian virtue, for forgiveness, for...

The gospel today teaches us how Jesus taught His disciples to pray. We learn how to pray from Jesus Himself. The gospel states, “Once Jesus was in a certain place praying, and when He had finished, one of his disciples said, 'Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples...'” Note the following: He did His prayers at a certain place, then He finished praying, and lastly, He was asked b...

Jesus frequently visited the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus in Bethany. It is so nice to see Him living as a true human being. He sought their company, to share experiences and stories. The gospel today describes the home space occupied by Jesus speaking and Mary listening to Him and Martha working in such a way that she was troubled. She complained to the Lord about Mary's not helping her. Jesu...