Making Friends With The Lord Jesus

What we usually do is to listen to ourselves. Worse, we just say immediately what we think. This leads to many errors and mistakes especially against charity. Human prudence requires us to at least think first and even better for Christians to listen to the Holy Spirit. You cannot go wrong in doing this. What might be problematic is to discern what He actually says. In any case, if we pursue this...

We depend on their witness of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The doubting Thomas was praised by Jesus because he saw Him and touched His Wounds. But Jesus praised all those who would come afterwards who without seeing Him or touching His Wounds, we would believe. We depend on that witness. This explains why the Apostles preached a lot the Resurrection. It became the...

That is it! Suffering has meaning. We will see this in how the Apostles take their flogging and humiliation in front of the Sanhedrin for the miracle of curing a crippled man.

We begin the season on Lent in the Catholic Church. We recall that the Church helps us to contemplate and incarnate the life of Jesus Christ. So she brings us through the various phases of his life. We began with His birth by preparing for it with the Advent Season. We then contemplated Jesus in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, delivered when the fullness of time arrived, His infancy, His chil...

Ash Wednesday signals the beginning of the Lenten season in the Roman Catholic Church. Just like the pair of seasons of Advent--a preparation for the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ--and Christmas, we have Lent--a preparation for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ--and Easter seasons. We Catholics recall more intensely and deeply the Public Life Of the Son of God on Earth that led Him to be caught an...

Our Lord Jesus Christ is tested by a reckless lawyer. He asks Our Lord what he needs to do to gain eternal life. This is a question we all need to ask, and find out the answer. We are destined to Heaven but we need to fulfill the requirements. The first is that we need to love God with all our mind, all our strength, all our soul, all our heart...

Man asks this question all the time, even when he does not realize it. We do things here on earth always for a purpose, for an ultimate purpose. It may be God or basically for selfish motives. We are so in hurry that we fail to take time to consider how this latter would fare as a last end. Will it bring me eternal life? If I know myself I would be easily disgusted if I was my own last end. I only...

Today we read in the Gospel about faith that Our dear Lord describes as powerful to move objects like a tree to the sea. If our faith needs nourishment to be strengthened then let us ask for more faith.

This is the Lord's reminder to his seventy-two disciples when they returned to see him after a day's work. They were jubilant because the forces of evil were subject to them. They had received the power to overcome these demonic forces from the Lord. We would equally feel so proud and joyous at the experience of sending the powerful devil off and back to where they came from. But Jesus cautions th...

Our Lord in the Gospel today from St. Luke chapter 10 warns Bethsaida and Chorazin about their fate if they do not repent. Jesus compares how much He had invested in these towns for their repentance with the case where He would have applied the same to Tyre and Sidon these would have repented. 

Today the Church celebrates these three Archangels. Let us pray to them and entrust to them our concerns.

The Gospel today tells us of what we need to do in order to follow Our Lord, even up to the point of martyrdom.

Today we read about Our Lord Jesus Christ on the way to Jerusalem but having to pass Samaria. There was this village that didn't want to accept Jesus since He was set on going to Jerusalem. The sons of thunder, James and John, wanted to bid fire from Heaven to consume that village. Jesus corrected them. His solution was simply to go to another village to avoid a situation of tension and conflict.

The sons of thunder, namely, John and James, asked our Lord whether they could send fire from Heaven to punish the village that refused to be hospitable to Our Lord who was passing through. The reason they had was that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. Our Lord corrected them and simply asked them to go to another village instead of having this frontal collision or conflict with that village that...

We read in the Gospel today about Dives and Lazarus, the Rich Man and Lazarus. Dives feasted magnificently everyday. He could not see the needs of the poor sick man at the gate of his property. Shouldn't we check out our surroundings and see the people around us?

Our Lord passed by the office of Levi, who would become St. Matthew later on. And He called him to follow Him. He got up immediately and followed the Lord. Jesus continues doing that today when He also passes by our places of work and calls us to follow Him, His footsteps, His teachings, His calling in the context of our work.

The only way is what Jesus praises in the Gospel today. That is that we should listen to the word of God and practice it.

Jesus Christ is the Light of our lives. With Him we can see better and penetrate more deeply and accurately into reality. This reality is what God provides us to find our path to Heaven. Such Light we do not put under a bushel or under a bowl. Such Light is best positioned to be able to provide guidance to us travelling to Heaven.

The Gospel of the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time makes us notice the contrast between those who follow Christ and those who are worldly. He encourages us to appreciate how these worldly people are astute in fulfilling their worldliness. Different from them are Christians who seem slow in being astute as well in furthering God's agenda in society. So Jesus challenges us to learn from the astuteness o...

God sows His seed, that is, His Word. He has foreseen the different types of recipients to His Word. And still He sows His Seed. He reaches out to us all the time. Let us be more responsible to receiving His seed. He reveals Himself to us via natural revelation as seen in His works

The Gospel today-Friday of the 24th week in Ordinary Time 16 September 2022- tells us of the women who accompanied the band of Jesus. Jesus treats women going beyond what was conventional in Jewish customs with regard to women.

Today we celebrate Our Lady of Sorrows. She stood at the foot of the Cross suffering with her Son on the Cross. Who mother would not suffer with her children? She would even desire to take their pain and make it her own just to save their children. Our Lady was identified with the Will of Jesus who was obeying His Father's desire to save mankind from sin by His paying with His Life the price of si...

We celebrate today the supernatural value of the Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. The cross and attendant crucifixion was hated penalty in the ancient world. The Romans adopted it to send a grim message to all its enemies. But the dying of Jesus on it transformed it into a grace from God. That teaches us who undergo crosses everyday to appreciate them because they help us participate in the work of...

This roman centurion exhibited a faith that amazed Jesus Himself. The soldier is remembered for his words in the words verbally said by everyone just before holy communion of the celebrant priest. The benefactor of the Jews simply saw that since he could order his soldiers to do something he transposed this analogy to Christ Himself. He only needs to say the word and his servant would be healed.

With our mistakes, failures and sins we might get into a crisis of sorts especially because of our milieu. There is a lot of talk about having to succeed, having to work hard and earn, etc. In fact, we may get the impression that there is no place for those of us who actually fail. Our self-esteem takes a deep dive. We get to believe we are no good. But this is not how God looks at us. He always a...