**Our Great Responsibility

        Our own soul and all others' souls.

***God Our Ultimate Quest

          I have quoted this saying of St. Augustine many times: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." This is so very true. I'd like to go beyond a bit and say "The more we surrender ourselves to God, the more we become like him." God is meant to be our refuge and perfector!

***How to Deal with Evil

         We get discouraged when we see that evil has taken over the world; you can feel the oppression. Now, God deals with every single soul. If you rebel against him, you'll get separated from him for eternity. Whether we have one evildoer or a billion of them, they will all be "taken care of" in the end. That sounds good, but it's most tragic. For God the Father loves all of them and the loss of one soul to him is as sad as losing all of them. For the sake of loving our Father, we must do our utmost to save as many souls as possible. That's why judging others is wrong, for it stops the flow of mercy from us. So hate the sin and not the sinner. Our sole business is to live for and to please God the Father alone, not to play God for an instant.

**To Be Ready to Meet God

         Americans are not good at saving money. Most people live from paycheck to paycheck. They make money and spend it fast for instant gratification. When a spouse, usually the husband, dies, often nothing's left for the wife to live on. I have witnessed so many cases like that. All this makes me wonder—if you don't know how to prepare yourself well to live a life on earth, how are you going to prepare yourself to live a life in heaven? It's a great feeling to know that you are ready to meet God your Father anytime without fear. In fact, you should yearn for that day. To prepare for that day, you need to know the Lord intimately to the point that you are one with him on earth. When you become inseparable from him, you are ready. 

***Obedience to God, Most Beautiful!

        Do God's will first. Everything else can wait. People often rationalize what they're doing by saying that God has given them this talent, so they must keep on doing it. It sounds right on the surface. They also want to justify making a lot of money by saying that with more money, they can help others more. There is truth here too, but it might not be their prime motivation. Anyway, to do God's will is to do his will without any interference on our part. If he tells you to go ahead to make more money or do whatever else specifically, you go ahead. It's listening to him only and not at all to yourself. You must be totally in tune with him to remain in obedience. This is the challenge and a joy. Let the Lord truly be your Lord and you'll have peace and be amply rewarded in the end.

**God's Infinite Patience

        Not only God's love and mercy are infinite, so is his patience. Most of us live for years. If you live till 80, you'll have 29.200 days. Assuming that you sleep 8 hours each day, the number of your waking hours comes to 467,200. Assuming that you won't fully understand and know how to make a decision to accept Christ the first ten years of your life, you'll still have 408,800 hours left for you to turn to Christ. Are you going to waste all those hours not even considering him? The Lord has done his part and now simply awaits in patience. You may still get that last dying moment to repent and save yourself, but that's taking an awfully big risk.

**Be like the Father

       In today's Gospel reading from Luke 6, Jesus said to his disciples: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." Then "Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you." Last, "The measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you." 

           Let me try to summarize all this.  (1) We must be as merciful as our Father. (2) The standard we set in dealing with others will be used by the Father in dealing with us. If we make it hard (easy) for others, God will make it hard (easy) for us.

***Why Go to Jesus

         John 6.68: Simon Peter said to Jesus, "Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life." Peter is right. Jesus is the only one who has the words of eternal life. Therefore, he is the one and only one we need to go to!

Human History Is All About . . .

man rebelling against God who created it out of love and whether it will turn to God to repent of its sins and start obeying him again. 

**Feeling Good About Yourself

        It's easy to admire or envy others who seem to be more fortunate and have a lot more than you in so many ways. And you start to feel sorry yourself and become unhappy. This shows that you do not know the true God of Christ yet. Christ himself was despised, looked down, ridiculed, laughed at, insulted, stripped of his garments, scourged, and even put to death, yet he never complained. If you have him, everything the heavenly Father has is now yours. You'll feel so content and thankful, realizing that you are the luckiest and most loved creature in the universe, just now awaiting your return to your Father. Those who have the world are to be pitied, not admired or envied. Know Christ and you'll know the truth and be set free! Good thoughts to start off this new month of March, 2021.