*****Ther Holy Spirit Is Real!

        Today is Pentecost Sunday. It's good to recap again my experience with the Holy Spirit. We must go back almost half a century to the 1970s, the heyday of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal Movement. I got involved in it because I was searching for the Holy Spirit. We were told that after confirmation the Hoy Spirit dwells within you, but how do I know if I didn't feel anything different? All members of the Renewal Movement had the choice to take the Life in the Spirit Seminar. After seven sessions, the whole group prayed over you for the release of the Spirit. I must say that in every case I saw, including my own, you develop a terrific desire to know the Lord who became alive in the Gospels. Praying to God became super easy and a joy at any time. Different people also received special gifts. One person found that his addiction to watching all the ballgames on TV was cured. I experienced a bubbling exuberance in my upper body for about three and a half months nonstop. At the first Charismatic Mass I attended, I received the gift of tears which made me cry tears of joy the entire time. The zeal for Christ I felt in my heart has only increased over these last five decades. God the Holy Spirit is real! Do not neglect to praise and pray to him!

**Great Sane Moment*

         I got up early this morning, went to the family room, and sat at the dining table, ready to pray. It was a beautiful day outside. My head was clear, my body feeling comfortable, and my spirit, resting in peace. I was aware of my Lord, his love for me, my faith in him . . . and the whole truth. I felt that moment was the most sane moment of my life!

***Confronting Our Greatest Challenge

        We are faced with whether to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior or not, for it could very well determine our eternity. If you were wise, you would try believing in him to see if it works for you. Of course, in that case you'll have to do it with complete honesty, for you cannot fool God if he's real.

*****Taking Control of Our Future!

        We know that life is so precarious that we can die at any moment. In an instant we'd be on the other side. Again, this is clear-cut, yet a lot of people don't seem to be concerned about that. Perhaps there're really having a good time on earth. Perhaps they think they'll be entering an unknown and there's no point thinking about it. I think they are making a huger mistake. My future is so important that I must find out as much about it as I can so as to be ready for it. In my case, I found Christ, learned the whole truth, and became super ready. What a relief and comfort, and great joy too as I think about what awaits me on the other side! 

***Serious Matter to Consider***

         Whatever we do, we serve either God or others, "others" here including ourselves, the world, and Satan. This is clearcut. We need to serve God out of gratitude alone, for he loves us and has died for our sins so that we might live forever. Secondly, being our creator, he's also going to be our final judge. Do you want to go to heaven or not? I hope you'll see the whole matter clearly and make the right choice. 

**Communion Experience*

           I attended a heavenly banquet offered personally to me by the Lord. 

**Jazzing Up Your Life*

        The Lord God is infinitely rich and loves us. What we can receive from him is inexhaustible! Get to know him well first, ask for whatever that's good for both you and him, and you'll get it. Then you'll be living a most exciting life! 

**It's a Great Feeling . . .

when you know Christ and that he is the truth.         

**Beauty of the Family

        While driving to morning Mass today, I had to brake my car to an almost complete stop when I saw a family of Canadian geese crossing the road ahead of me. These geese visit us every year and they pair up for life. The family I saw consisted of the two parents with around half a dozen goslings. They were not in a rush and the goslings looked really cute following their parents. The Lord made me see how beautiful a human family could be when all its members love him and are united as one in him. Alas, can you even find such a family today?

***Remain Awake and Active

        We need to remain awake and active at all times. When we are asleep or half-asleep, impure thoughts often enter our minds and we find ourselves weak in resisting them. Then we wake up, see everything clearly, and are able to dismiss them outright. When we are awake, we need to be aware of God's holy presence and the urgency to help him defeat evil and save souls. That the Lord will be victorious in the end is certain, but that doesn't mean we can just trust in him and wait for things to happen. On the contrary, we need to submit ourselves totally to him to actively carry out every single will of his for us.

**Union Counts

        Communion experience. I don't see or hear Jesus physically, but I know I am in union with him spiritually, and that's all that counts right now.

**Believe Only in God

        We humans come up with some amazing products and inventions and believe that we are capable of achieving anything on our own. Let's now look at the Lord God. Not only he created us and everything else, he's able to create anything on the spot simply by willing it. We are just not in his league! We can't even remain alive without his support! Be humble foremost so that you may remain in the truth.

***More Basic than Patience

         Three days ago, I blogged about patience being a sign of holiness. I now see that to be perfectly patient, we mustn't have any ego. I see clearly that it's my ego that has caused me to become impatient every time in my past. So humility is even more basic than patience. Be totally humble and you are holy.

***What God Desires the Most from Us***

         In today's Gospel reading from John 17, Jesus prayed to the Father that all those whom he had given him might be one as he and the Father were one. To be one is the closest possible relationship we can have with each other. To be one with God is to be in union with him. When we are all in union with him, our oneness becomes extra special. This union with God is not just another relationship; it is the ultimate relationship we can have with God, one that exalts us to the highest level of our existence. We Catholics should rejoice that we have the Holy Eucharist, the Most Blessed Sacrament, given to us by Christ himself at the Last Supper. The Lord knows human nature fully, so the idea of providing us the consecrated bread and wine to consume at Mass is ingenious. Without this physical union, spiritual union remains an abstract concept. The Eucharist seals the deal here. In union with God, we become his and he ours, and we are no longer of the world. It is the intimate relationship most desired by our Lord. All Catholics should make seeking union with God through the Holy Eucharist their top goal. (Again, I recommend reading the book He and I by Gabrielle Bossis, a spiritual classic which has become increasingly hard to find.)

**Only Relationship We Need to Keep

        In today's Gospel reading from Acts 20, Paul gave his farewell speech at Miletus to the presbyters of the Church of Ephesus. When he had finished speaking, he knelt down and prayed with them all. They were all weeping loudly as they threw their arms around Paul and kissed him, for they were deeply distressed that he had said that they would never see his face again. All our relationships with others on earth will end one day, but our relationship with the Lord God will last forever. When we get to heaven, we'll again be united with all others there as one in the Father, this time forever.

***Our Biggest Enemy***

         When we abandon ourselves to God, we no longer care about ourselves, and we become completely free. It just shows that we are our own biggest enemy in wanting to be set free.

**Faith to Be Ever Present

        Communion time message: If we receive the Lord and expect that he'll transform us for the better, we need to believe in it. With him, things do not happen without faith.

***Loving God Is Exciting**

        For Christ the Lord, we can never love him enough. The exciting part of loving him is that we can always love him still more, knowing that we can never match his love for us. It really comes down to letting him love us, for it's by letting him love us that our love for him grows. While life with the Lord is most exciting. life without him becomes utterly boring.