"Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Sunday, January 4, 2026

***Denying Ourselves Our First Step***

        Today the Church celebrates The Epiphany of the Lord. I have just one message to share. This saying of Jesus to his disciples appears in all three Synoptic Gospels: "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." We see that the first order of business is to deny ourselves, which clearly goes against our grain. Then I realized that the Lord is right; obviously, we can't follow him and ourselves at the same time. So denying ourselves is the beginning of setting ourselves free, and the motivation to follow Christ is the driving force that can help us succeed. It's basically letting the Lord rightly be our Lord. This morning after I got up from bed, I found that my Brown Scapular and Miraculous Medal were all tangled up. I had to take both off my neck to untangle them and it took me almost a full five minutes! Every unusual happening is a message from God. I believe that his message for me was that if I do not deny myself, life will always end up a tangled mess.

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