Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Our Lord Jesus winds down His monumental Sermon on the Mount with shorter teachings, but no less important ones. First, He commands us not to be wasteful of His Things, like the graces He gives us. We would have to answer for each grace He gifts us with. Then, the Golden Rule is given. This not at all unique to Christ. Other cultures also follow this principle, although they express it in the nega...

We celebrate the Birth of St. John the Baptist today. His significance stems from his role in Salvation history. He was assigned to prepare for the arrival of the Savior.

Our Lord asked His Apostles why they were frightened when He was there with them, only sleeping at the stern of the boat they were on to transit to the other side of the Lake of Galilee. An unforeseen gale began to blow, pushing up the waves so much that their boat was almost swamped. They feared for their lives that they woke Jesus up to plead for their safety. The Lord criticized them for their...

Worrying is part and parcel of daily living. That stems from our certain attachments to certain creatures like comfort, wealth, making an impression in the others, etc. As Jesus says in the Gospel today, we cannot serve two masters, i.e., a creature and God. He encourages us to follow God by trusting Him instead. He values us so much that He will not let something bad happen to us. But as St. Thom...

Jesus challenges us today in the Gospel regarding where we put our treasure. He points out the seriousness of the matter. One's life is lived according to the treasure. If we keep our treasure only in creatures of this world, then you would run into problems, like exposure to rust, thieves, loss, etc. If we store our treasures in matters leading to Heaven, then we would be better off because our t...

Jesus addresses today in the Gospel of the Mass the matter of how to pray. He criticized the multiplication of words in some prayers. He wants us to pray simply and to use the Our Father as a guide and preparation to pray for our needs. The Lord's Prayer is that pray. This prepares us for real prayer by going through each petition contained there.

Today, Jesus elucidates on the intentions we may have in doing our good deeds. He reminds us that we should not want to simply attract men's notice. We need to rectify our intentions constantly so that we keep our intentions upright. That means we do things, so God sees us. Our dear Lord encourages us to offer our deeds to God, and not to garner men's attention. Naturally, our good deeds will attr...

Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us we need to go beyond what was practiced before Him, namely, Love your neighbor and hate your enemies. The Divine Lord requires us to love even those we deem unlovable, like our enemies who have hurt us in some way. He reasons with His listeners that His Heavenly Father makes His sun rise and set for everyone, even those who hate Him or do not follow or believe in H...

Jesus points out today in the Gospel that this principal enunciated in the title was development of Jewish law or the Mosaic Law. However, Jesus perfects it by saying that we should not even think about getting back at our opponents. We should expose our other cheek if he hits us on the other. This means that we need to forgive our offenders. The violence has to end in us. We should not spread the...

Jesus illustrates to us through parables what the Kingdom of God is like. He uses today the images of seeds, plants, sowing and harvesting. He underscores the phenomenon of how these seeds grow and mature for the harvest. We do not know how it develops, but the seed does grow. And that is an image of the Kingdom of God growing in us and through us. We receive the seed first in Baptism and then in...

The Lord emphasizes simplicity in speech. We fall for egoism and primacy of selfishness when we lie and complicate our speech. Truthfulness is the best to follow. Making oaths need not be necessary just to assure the others that we are telling the truth and that one will fulfill his commitment. Ordinarily, what needs to be done is to say things simply and truthfully. Yes if we want to say Yes, and...

Today's Gospel sends to listen to Jesus Christ who on His own authority as Creator and, therefore, as Supreme Lawgiver, teaches that it is enough to look at a woman lustfully to commit adultery with her. So, God's prohibition against the action of a spouse to engage in sexual intercourse with someone not his or her spouse, also includes "lesser" decisions in a person like looking, imagining, desir...

The good Lord explains to us today in the Gospel of the Mass that we need to address the waywardness of our passion called Anger. It should be the right kind of anger. Anger is one of the emotions God has given us. It is a certain vehemence of our strength in battling evil, i.e., evil that we ascertain to be conquerable. However, we cannot give it vent just like that. To be virtuous, it needs to b...

The Church sets up the life of St. Barnabas for our contemplation today. We can learn from him a lot, especially how he disagreed with the Apostle of the Gentiles and set off in separate journeys on the matter of St. Mark accompanying them.

The sense Jesus gives us about the Law and the Prophets is that these latter were incomplete. Jesus came to complete them, i.e., to perfect them. Thus, He follows the Law of Moses but as the Messiah, He adds to them. For example, with the law against adultery, He underlines the significance of the thoughts and desires against chastity. He explains that even when a man looks at a woman with lust, h...

Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Barnabas, Apostle. Our dear Jesus expounds in the sermon on the mount after mentioning the Beatitudes that we are salt and light. Those are two realities that are well known by the Israelites. Our Lord benefits from them to teach that we are to exhibit the qualities of these realities. As salt, we need to give off flavor to our surroundings. That would mean tha...

We read today the Beatitudes according to St. Matthew. They are the new commandments of the Kingdom of Jesus Christ. We need to learn to live them by depending on God's grace. We can narrow down to the beatitude that says "Happy the Gentle: they shall have the earth for their heritage." We all need to learn to be gentle. Furthermore, we are often tempted to be rough and violent. Impatience is some...

We can be His mother, His brother, or His sister as long as we do His Will! It is as simple as that. The Jews were so full of themselves as members of the Chosen People. They believed they did not have to have any interior conversion. It sufficed to have external actions. What was visible was enough. No need really for inner changes. Such internal changes were what God wanted. They were distancing...

After celebrating the Sacred Heart of Jesus yesterday, the Church praises God today for the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Her Heart is immaculate because it is without stain of sin. She is immaculate because her heart gravitates around God. She looks for Him constantly, just like when she and Joseph searched for Him anxiously for three days when the Child remained in Jerusalem without informing His pa...

God has a Heart! With Jesus Christ, we appreciate God's Heart that loves all of us. He proved the extent of His love when He died on the Cross. After the soldier pierced His side with a lance, out came blood and water. There was nothing more Jesus could give us. He gave us everything, and He paid with the ultimate price with His life. How do we correspond to His love? We need to love Him in return...

It is so moving to see a marathon runner never giving up in making it to the finish line. He gives this endeavor everything he has. This could be a fine image of how our love for God should be. Today, the Gospel tells us so much, i.e., love God with all our heart, all our understanding, and all our strength. Do we? It is curious, but we might show more dedication to a creature than we do to God. J...

Our tendency is to put obstacles to His Will, to our getting to know His Will and to us accomplishing His Will. The Gospel today gives us an idea how Jesus handled the Sadducees who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. They pose to him an example of 7 brothers who marry the same woman, one after the other. Each one dies without leaving any child. By the Law of Moses those brothers are...

Roman emperors were seen as divinities during the Roman times. They printed their faces on coins. So, in reply to whether he was for paying taxes to the Romans or not, Jesus asked to see denarius coin. He asks whose inscriptions and head appear on the coin. “Caesar's” Jesus tells them, “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." He succeeded in getting Himself out...

The Lord used parables to preach and teach His listeners. He employed stories to help in understanding certain concepts and practice of virtues. The ones listening could see themselves in these narratives, and thus they could learn more about themselves. When His enemies wanted to arrest Jesus, they plainly were guilty of being someone in the parable who wanted to murder the heir of the owner's vi...

Our Lord Jesus Christ, on the night before He was to be crucified, instituted the Holy Eucharist. He commanded us to do this in memory of Him. This is how we remember Him. The words of consecration are uttered by the priest in Holy Mass and the miracle of the Transubstantiation occurs, i.e., the bread and wine are converted to the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of the Second Person of the Bless...