Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

This is the basic and most important disposition of the human creature before his Creator. This was the disposition of Mary, who began to bear the Son of God in her womb because she said yes to God's proposal for her to be the Mother of God. This reality, this historical fact, we recall reverently when we say the first joyful mystery of the holy rosary and whenever we say the Angelus. Oh! How sign...

Jesus in the gospel today brings back the institution of marriage to the way it was when God created the universe in the beginning. Moses had permitted the Israelites to have divorce. This was because of the hardness of their hearts. But Jesus returns this institution back to its initial design, i.e., it is indissoluble. What Jesus does regarding marriage, we need to do also with respect to bringi...

The seventy-two disciples Jesus appointed came rejoicing to report about their day. Wow! They were jubilant! They were so elated that the devils were subject to them. But Jesus reminded them that more than their wonder about their powers over the demon, they should focus on the fact that their names were being written in Heaven. Why? They were doing the bidding of the Lord! This gets us into Heave...

Jesus makes this plain to us. Yesterday, we commented in the homily about the Lord preparing His disciples to go ahead of Him to the towns He would visit. They were to prepare the people there to receive Him. God appointed many prophets and other instruments of His to transmit to the Israelites His teachings to prepare them for the coming of the Messiah. St. John the Baptist was the last one, befo...

St. Paul stated this title for today's homily. Jesus appoints 72 more disciples, and He assigned them to go ahead of Him to the towns He was going to pass. They were the advance team to prepare for the coming of the Lord. This continues today, with each of us appointed likewise by God by virtue of our Baptism. We thus became other Christs, even Christ Himself. Hence, St. Paul described us as ambas...

Our Lord teaches us about the existence of these angels, since today we celebrate the feast of the guardian angels. These splendid creatures are connected to the foundation of Opus Dei, that we celebrate also today. No coincidence really! The Guardian Angel is placed beside us to bring us to Heaven. We need to communicate with him, especially because our souls and hearts are the venue of war. The...

Jesus is rejected by a Samaritan town since He was set to proceed to Jerusalem. He suffered being discriminated against. His attitude to the Samaritan woman is totally the opposite. He cared for her salvation and conversed with her and led her up to her conversion. In today's gospel, it is a shame that they rejected Him. James and John wanted to bid fire from heaven to consume that town. Jesus tau...

The disciples argue about who among them was the greatest. This almost sounds funny. Why do we argue about this matter? It must be that they wanted to position themselves in the coming kingdom of Jesus. Our dear Lord corrected them by clarifying who would be the greatest in His Kingdom. It turns out that one needs to be a child to be the greatest. What a paradox, right? But this is what Our Lord d...

John the Apostle reported to Our Lord about someone casting out devils in the name of Jesus, although he was not one of their number. Our Lord corrected him. We should realize that one who performs a miracle in His Name will not speak evil of Him. We do not need to be in the same group or following. This should humble us, rather than make us jealous, possessive, exclusivists, etc.

Maturity in our faith requires from us a certain level of self-knowledge. That knowledge about our very core. We are sinners, and we have this basic tendency to evil. The Catechism calls this as the fomes peccati. We need to have this basic awareness, namely, we are weak. This will keep us grounded and humble, no matter what we achieve or reach in our lives. Let us not kid ourselves about this. We...

We are presented today in the gospel, Jesus' question to His disciples about what people say about Him. Who was He according to them? Then, He turns the question directly to His disciples. What do you say about Me? Each of us needs to feel this question being addressed to each of us personally. Our Lord wants us to mature our reasoning about our faith. Before this, we usually believed whatever bec...

We hear about what happened to Herod and his people. With Jesus doing prodigious deeds like miracles and raising the dead, they had to find an explanation for it. Who was He? Some talk about Him being John the Baptist but Herod reiterates that it could not be because he had had him decapitated. Others were talking about Him being an Elijah having returned and so forth. We should address rumors and...

The Lord speaks to us in the Gospel today when he mentions us to be a light. Light is an image God uses to refer to Jesus, the Messiah. However, Jesus wants each of us to be light, too. Lamps that are lit are placed on lamp stands so that their light could banish the darkness and shadows in a room. They are not placed under a bed. No one would benefit from their light. Each of us is supposed to be...

Jesus replies in the gospel today that the greatest is the child. This is not just any child. But he is the child who is innocent, humble, simple, open to learning, docile, etc. Jesus identifies Himself with that child who is ignorant but open to learning. He is the child who is at the bottom of the totem pole, i.e., the one who is ordered around to do services, and chores. The Lord's disciples go...

It is the sick who need the doctor. Jesus says this at the end of the gospel of the mass today to celebrate the feast of the evangelist and apostle, namely, St. Matthew. This apostle, just like the rest, was a sinner. He was perceived as a sinner publicly. This is because of his profession as a tax collector. Tax collecting is universally perceived as open to abuse. Collectors take advantage of th...

The Gospel today tells us about the women who accompanied Jesus and His band of apostles to provide their own resources and help for their undertaking. This accompaniment and support continues up to today. We can only thank God for the women in the Church. They provide some kind of semblance or even or actuality of having a family atmosphere. Anyhow, these women are not only providers, but they ge...

The Devil may use our perception of our sinfulness or our many sins to discourage us. The Gospel today describes what we need to do in such situations. This woman of the street expressed her love in a very special way with details of affection. She used her obvious gifts to please Jesus, instead of using them for her selfish purposes. She wept, repenting from her many sins, and used her tears to w...

We find Our Lord Jesus expressing His frustration. He expressed it by describing what He thought of the people of His generation, although what He describes is applicable to people of any generation. "We played the pipes for you, and you wouldn't dance; we sang dirges, and you wouldn't cry." Our Lord tries to win people to check themselves to be aware of their need to be saved: He employed miracle...

Today, we read in the gospel of the mass about a widow who has the huge problem of finding out how she would support herself, now that her husband had died and her only son just died. She was burying her in the gospel scene. Jesus meets the funeral procession. He stops the column of wailing people. He reads deeply into the plight of this widow. Moved by compassion, He resurrects the young man and...

Today, we read in the Gospel of the Mass of the encounter of Jesus with the centurion. A centurion was an officer in the Roman Army in charge of a hundred men. He had a servant he was fond of and who was sick and near death. He sent Jewish friends to ask Jesus for the favor of curing the servant. Jesus goes, but when He was closer to the house, the centurion sent Him a message. It said that he did...

We are unable to celebrate liturgically the memorial of the Sorrowful Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, at the foot of the Cross. However, the gospel of the Mass provides us with a text that directly challenges all of us who desire to follow Jesus. Jesus declares that He was destined to suffer. That was a shocker to the ears of those apostles, and it reverberated in the ears of Christians ever sinc...

Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. We remember the value of the Cross of Jesus. God was not constrained to save us by dying on the Cross. He could have chosen another way to do this. However, in His infinite wisdom, He selected this way of the Cross. We can see why. Anyone, let alone a God who undergoes this torturous death, who suffers to this extent to save His people from s...

Jesus talks about the problem with the blind leading the blind. Both will simply fall into the pit. We remember that we are all on a trip to Heaven. Thus, we need to know the correct way to get there. We need guidance, insofar as going to that place is not that clearly marked out. Take, for example, today being Friday coinciding with the 13th of the month. What does that say to you? People may be...

Today, Jesus encourages us to learn to face the music. If we do something deserving a penalty, then we need to expect that penalty to come upon us. Some escape with impunity in this world. But we will never be able to escape the divine judgment. We hear Jesus telling us today that we need to love our enemies. We need to be merciful so that God show us mercy as well. We pray in the Lord's Prayer th...

Our world is fallen. We are all fallen. We have in our souls the aspiration to infinity and perfection for eternity. However, this world cannot provide us with any of that. They will come only in the next world. Here is a valley of tears, suffering and pain. We can only expect disappointments and the sort. The Lord, however, gives us today in the Gospel of the Mass, another perspective. What and h...