Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

Joshua challenged the Israelites into deciding who God they would serve. We need to respond likewise to this challenge today in all our circumstances. Today there entice us many other idols just like during the times of Joshua.

Joshua called for a meeting with the leaders of Israel. He began to enumerate to them what God had done for them from even before sending Abraham to begin a new race of people, i.e., the people from whom the Messiah would come from. His enumeration was a veritable narration of their history up to that point. God did everything for them and they just had to tag along, go along and collaborate with...

Joshua was appointed by God to take up the leadership of the Israelites after Moses passed away. God gave him the same capability as Moses who parted the Red Sea for the escaping Israelites to pass dryshod. God empowered Joshua to do practically the same thing, only that the river concerned was the Jordan river. God underscored the importance of having a leader. We are all called to lead since we...

The bottom line of our relationship with God is about how much we trust him. If we don't then we would be in doubt of his goodness. Moses doubted when he struck the rock as instructed by God to do but with the doubt whether that would be enough to get water to gush out of the rock, he struck it again. God was displeased. He punished him by denying him entry into the Promised Land. God only showed...

Today we celebrate a solemnity about the Blessed Virgin Mary being assumed into Heaven. Among other things, this goes to show how much dignity there is in a female, in a woman, in a daughter of God, and in this particular case, in the Mother of God.

We shouldn't just treat God as way of expression in whatever way we want. He is the God of gods and Lord of lords. He is transcendent and here with us at the same time. He is not a part of the universe. He is the God we need to adore, praise, ask pardon from, thank and ask from for absolutely everything. How much is God a God to us?

The first reading of today's mass of the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time tells us of Elijah's change of heart regarding his mission. All he needed was an experience of contact with God. He was fleeing from persecution and he reached Mount Horeb. There was an earthquake, fire and wind but God was not in any of them. Then there was a gentle breeze and Elijah got his fill that led him to return to his m...

The Jews had the practice of reciting the Shema three times a day. This was logical since we in our love for God although theoretically certain in practice we forget it or go about our activities having a different idea in mind or a different love that we aim at. The recital of the Shema or in the Catholic custom the morning offering could help us keep ourselves straight and sure towards God. The...

Relative to having this relationship with Christ, that would have infinite value, everything else that may be valued here on earth would assume a lesser value. St. Paul employs a very strong word. He compared these to rubbish. That is how much he prized knowing Jesus Christ. Thus we can examine how goes our relationship with Christ and especially how we keep up in knowing him. Do you need to do so...

God loves a cheerful giver, says St. Paul in his second letter to the Corinthians. This is a basic Christian principle. We cannot behave with God as like what we do to our parents when we begrudgingly do what they ask us to do in the house because we don't like what they were told to do. Do we pout after being requested to do something? When asked to do some errands for them do we get moody and dr...

God's goodness is seen in His caring for us by appointing instruments to help us discern God's Will.

The First Reading of today's mass brings us to contemplate the complaining of the Israelites because of the difficulties of the journey to the Promised Land.

St. John Mary Vianney was a man of great penance and sacrifice. He asked the Blessed Sacrament during a Benediction that he'd accept all the sacrifices that He would send him for the conversion of his parish. The first reading of the mass tells us of the concept of the Jubilee in Israel. With the Jubilee we should recall we have received gifts from the Lord and that we need to share that with the...

Moses built the Tent of the Covenant by following the instruction s of God to the letter. This is also how we need to approach the will of God. We need to listen to it and obey it. But there are also some things that God wants us to use our God given talents especially our spiritual faculties to choose what we would like to do, always being within the wide road that God grants us leeway.

St. Paul tells us in his first letter to the Corinthians that he encourages us to imitate him since he also imitates Christ. If he does not try to imitate Our Lord his moral authority over the people would practically disappear.

The three readings in the mass today show us this importance. Solomon asked for the ability to distinguish good and evil. In the second reading St. Paul tells us to ask to be saved. The Gospel tells us to ask that God give us the pearl of great price and the treasure in the field, i.e., the discernment of what God wants us to do in this world and for which God created us.

God did so to make it easier for us to know what we needed to do to do good and avoid evil. As the situation of man was debilitated because of original sin, man needed assistance to know accurately God's Will in the Decalogue. Without this aid man would have tended to commit errors in getting to know God's laws, not everyone would be talented enough and have the necessary time to analyze his exper...

God saves His people and He fights for them.

It is such an important revelation about who God is when in the first reading of today's mass for the 16th Week in Ordinary Time tells us that God offers us forgiveness as long as we repent of our sins. He is ever ready to forgive us.

God does not forsake his chose people. He sends Moses as his instrument. As usual when God chooses someone, that someone brings up an objection. But God prevails by saying He will accompany Moses.

The story of how Moses was born, the circumstances he was born in and how he survives as a baby and becoming the son of Pharaoh's daughter is illustrative of God intervening in our world.

God's omnipotence means that His Will is uncontested in the universe. No creature can resist His all powerful Will. However, His only weakness is a created will like us and the fallen angels who can elect to be proud and disobedient. But even then God power accomplishes its purpose especially because He can get good from evil.

We need this virtue to counteract the root cause of our pride and disobedience to God's Will.

The preparation we have been undertaking these days with the first readings of the masses include the understanding that although our Lord does not need any of us to accomplish His Will, He has wanted to count on our contribution, our free correspondence to His divine inspiration and action in our souls. What a privilege! Thanks be to God that He has wanted to depend on us also!

This is staple in the Christian conscience. When a problem is observed or suffered by a Christian he or she strives to--at least in theory--to see what could be done about it, not by someone else--although that may be possible--but by the one who notices such problem. One tries to see that he is called by God to address the issue and to do something about it. When there is a crisis in the Church a...