**First Steps in a Spiritual Journey

        Accepting God's love for you is usually the first step you take in your journey of faith. Letting that love embrace you completely is the first step you take later when you decide to seek union with God.

*God in Contrast to the World

        God can quench all your thirst, fulfill your innermost desires, and fill the empty voids of your life. God can soothe your heart and heal your soul. You can never get tired of enjoying God. Replace "God" with "the world" in the statements above and none of them remains true anymore. God is someone you can never love enough, while the world is something you cannot possibly love.

**Riddle of Life Solved

            This morning the first thought that came to my mind was Luke 12.51 in which Jesus said to his Apostles, "Do you think I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division." It so happened that the reading at Mass from Matthew 10 was on that same saying: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword." And later in Matthew 25, speaking about the final judgment, Jesus said to his disciples, "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left." The division finalized.

         So this is the reality of life. Having inherited the original sin from our ancestors, we all became sinners. Then God loved us so much that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. The division comes about when we do not all believe in the Son. The ball is in our court.

***Warning: Worse Persecution Ahead!

        My country, like many others around the world, has been declining morally for the last half a century or so. From the spiritual point of view, you can say that Satan has sneaked up upon us step by step until the society and quite a sizable minority have become practically godless. Overall the large majority, being civilized and more gentle, has remained rather silent, while the other side makes loud noises and resorts to attacking anyone who does not go along with them violently. Let's say that the spiritual warfare going on now is rather intense and fearsome. But I do see hope ahead, as the Lord God always crushes his enemies and protects his own people at critical times. When that happens, the godless ones will become even more vicious – so expect and be prepared for facing worse persecution ahead. This is the time to submit ourselves to the Lord to grow strong spiritually.

All Set for Eternity

        Communion experience. Jesus is forever. I now belong to eternity. And every moment is a celebration.

The Way We Should Live

        Once you have found that God is exactly what your soul needs to complete your existence, you experience so much joy and freedom that every worldly thing just becomes secondary, peripheral, or downright irrelevant. This is how you become detached to all things except God, the way it should be. Shouldn't we be attached to the one who lovingly created us the most? 

**Making God Nice to You

        In today's reading from Matthew 10, Jesus said to his Apostles, "Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father." This is fair enough and is line with what Jesus taught earlier, known to us now as the Golden Rule: "Do to others as you would have them do to you." We can easily make that into "Do to God as you would have him do to you." Now you know exactly how to make God treat you nicely.

*Our Noblest Profession

        To be a servant is not a bad thing. In fact, to be a servant of God is best thing you can possibly do. A faithful servant of God is free from serving himself and is thus free. Besides, he is now a friend of Jesus. Moreover, God exalts all his humble servants and will reward them with eternal life. Therefore, serving God has to be our most satisfying and noblest profession.  

*God Exalts the Humble

        To be humble is to acknowledge that God alone is great. Then you become great in his eyes. Humility moves the Lord. That's why when you surrender yourself to him, he makes you one with him.

**Life-Changing Experience

        Communion experience. I was not receiving the bread as the Lord's body symbolically; I truly received his body! All communicants must let this fact sink in so that their lives might be transformed forever!