**Being Good Not Good Enough

        To get your sins forgiven, you need to accept and believe in Christ as your Savior. You might think that you are a pretty good person, and maybe you are, but that is no guarantee that you'll make heaven. Matthew 10.33: Whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father – says the Lord to the Twelve. Yes, accepting Christ does take precedence over getting your sins forgiven. 

***Through Jesus Only!

        John 14.6: Jesus said to Thomas, "I am the way and the the truth and the life.  No one comes to the Father except through me." This makes perfect sense, for he is to be our sole judge and the only one who can take away our sins! It follows that there is no way we can bypass him, right?

**Peace in Christ Only

        Peace on earth begins when you realize that in the God of Christ you can have your future secured for all eternity! No one else in history can promise you that as Christ has with such authority, backed up at the same time by mighty deeds, culminating in his own death and Resurrection. Only in him, the Prince of Peace, will one find ultimate peace.  

**Happy Ending!

        Communion experience. Christ is indeed our end. Once you've let him capture you, your life is full and complete, and you simply rest in him until he takes you to where he is. If you ever prayed for a happy ending to your life, this is it!

*Crux of Making Spiritual Progress

        We know we should love God more, but we cannot accomplish this on our own, for we are finite beings. To go beyond what we can achieve, we must open ourselves to God more to let him power us. Know that the Lord wants to enter totally into our heart to help and we are at the helm of how wide to open the gate of our heart.  

***Getting to the Crux of Our Problems***

        We do not let the God of Christ be our God. If we stop playing God and start obeying him, we'll instantly have heaven on earth!

*Christ Has all We Need to Know

        Anyone who focuses their attention on things of this world only is myopic. Then there are those who search for spiritual truths in the wrong places and end up with nebulous beliefs. Ram Dass is a case in point. You can find out more about him on Wikipedia. I watched the short Netflix documentary "Ram Dass, Going Home" – what he says about life, death, soul, reincarnation, etc., might be attractive to many spiritual seekers, but obviously he doesn't know what he's talking about. Only Christ has provided clear and positive answers to living our spiritual life now and forever. Start or end your search with him.

*Taking Mass Seriously

          At the Last Supper, the Lord Jesus held the First Mass and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Therefore, we should take Mass most seriously. The focus of Mass should be on adoring and glorifying the Lord alone; distraction in any form, no matter how good its intention, should be considered out of place. And worshippers must realize that they are in the house of the Lord and observe silence. Can all this happen in an ordinary parish? I believe that if you do take things seriously, people will come to respect that. It's precisely because you are casual about it that people lose their seriousness too.

**Preparing for Union With God

        In Psalm 31, David writes "Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit." Jesus on the cross cried out "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit" before breathing his last. To me, the spirit is more encompassing than either the heart or the soul. When we commend our spirit into God's hands, we entrust our totality to him. Therefore, making this commitment often should condition us for union with God.  

***Doing Everything With God

        Normally, we don't try to "bother" God with little things we can easily do on our own and only ask for his help when we feel that we need it. Today I ask myself why not ask the Lord to get involved with everything I do, big or little. It would be an excellent way of acknowledging his constant presence and showing my utter need for his companionship. It should strengthen our union of dwelling in each other. So it's doing everything for him and with him. You can never do enough for him who has given all of himself to us.

*Happy, Blessed, and Free Living

        People remain in darkness because it is easier for them to keep their sins hidden than to face light and have them all exposed. They forget that God sees everything in their hearts. Sometimes avoiding facing God can be a sin too, depending upon the circumstances. Again, only God can judge that. Living in darkness is not living at all. Happy, blessed, and free is the one lives completely in the light of Christ, with nothing to hide from the Lord!    

Peace From God Alone

        Today's  Communion antiphon, John 14.27: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you, says the Lord. The peace God gives us is indeed different because it affects the very soul. Since the world has no power to touch the soul, whatever it gives cannot truly be peace.        

Making Doing Good Meaningful

        Doing good per se is good, but to make it meaningful, you must have a higher purpose. When we treat our own family members kindly, it's only natural. When we do good to strangers, it only makes us feel good. The higher purpose I am talking about is to do good for the sole purpose of pleasing God, not ourselves. This is the way to be set free and to build up lasting treasures in heaven. What Jesus has done to us is most meaningful because he died for us willingly in complete obedience to the Father. No act can be meaningful should God be kept out of the picture.

**Sad Division

        At the end of Mass this morning, Fr. P held up a baby high to show us the one he just baptized yesterday, and the little one grinned. The whole congregation rejoiced and applauded. At that moment, I thought of those babies who did not get baptized because the parents either did not know Christ or had fallen away from their faith before their child was born. It saddened me to see this division among the children through no fault of theirs. 

**Most Tragic and Foolish Act

        Disregard of Your Own Soul.        

***Beautiful Union

        Communion experience. God is completely open and ready. We match him and voilà, the most beautiful encounter happens!

**Letting God Unfold His Plan

        Again, in the Gospel reading from Luke, Jesus says to his disciples, "Everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled. Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem." Somehow, at that point, the Lord made me see that there was no reason for us to be terrified of anything anymore, as everything would unfold according to his plan.

*Complete Self-Giving

       In today's Gospel reading from Luke 24, the disciples recognized the Lord Jesus in the breaking of the bread. Each time at Mass, when I see the priest breaking the host, I know the Lord is letting himself be broken and distributed to each one of us, inviting us to join him in union with him.