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

Tuesday, July 7, 2020

**How to "Control" God

        Simple. You want God to be on your side, so you join him. You surrender yourself to him and he and you become one. Now, your wish is his wish which becomes his command.

**Settling Believing in God or Not

        Business investors look at the benefit/cost ratio. If the number looks good, they put in their money. If I receive an offer that would benefit me in some way, I look at the reward/effort ratio. Would it be worth my effort to get that reward? Now, consider if we should believe in God or not. Here the benefit or reward is infinite because you get to go to heaven! Infinity over any number is still infinity. No other ratio can possibly beat that. So, I should believe in God at any cost or effort. 

***Ultimate Humility

        When God chose to come down to earth to go through agony, scourging, being mocked at, and finally crucifixion, experiencing it all as one of us, this is ultimate humility! Besides showing how much he loves us, he is showing us that the most exalted one is most humble. So be like him to be exalted by him.

*Heaven Makes Us Forgetful

        Once you arrive at heaven, you'll be so joyful that all the pains you suffered on earth will be forgotten in an instant. A hundred million years of pain on earth is nothing compared to one second of joy in heaven. Our goal is to return to our creator so that we may fully enjoy his love again. Christ has shown us the way by his example. All we need to do is to follow in his footsteps.

***Boundless Mercy***

        What is so wonderful about Christ is that you can always begin anew with him! You may be a habitual sinner, but as long as you repent you sins, no matter how great they are, you become clean again. There is no limit to how many times he will forgive you. His mercy knows no bounds. That's why he wants us to forgive others too. In him, there is always hope! This is something to appreciate. Otherwise, we don't stand a chance of being saved. Of course, the door will be shut when we die. What we need to do is to be smart and get inside that door before it closes!

Monday, July 6, 2020

***A Relationship Made in Heaven***

        One greatest joy is to share everything about yourself with your Lord. Guess what, he in turn shares everything about himself with you. And you have a relationship that's completely open and honest, with you and the Lord becoming one and soulmates with each other! Can you imagine that now there are absolutely no barriers between you and the Lord anymore? Time to rejoice in the Lord forever!

***Trying to Understand Faith

         In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 9, a woman suffering hemorrhages for twelve years came up behind Jesus and touched the tassel on his cloak. She said to herself, "If only I can touch his cloak, I shall be cured." Jesus turned around and saw her, and said, "Courage daughter! Your faith has saved you." And from that hour the woman was cured.
         I am still trying to understand faith more. If I cut my finger, it would be nice that I pray to the Lord for healing and it's healed instantly. In reality, it doesn't happen like that. First of all, I know that the finger will heal in a few days and the pain I feel is not bad at all, and I really don't want to bother the Lord for that. In other words, my strong desire to be healed is absent. Should I be suffering as much as the woman with hemorrhages, I probably would strongly desire that the Lord heal me and he very likely will do just that. So faith comes forth from our heart's desire in a natural way. I'd like to mention again the time my son could have died from a virus attack. While he was in critical condition in ICU, I walked up to him and said without hesitation "Be healed in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," while making the sign of the cross on his forehead. Three days later, he recovered and was sent home. So I think the secret is to trust in the Lord with all your heart and pray when you are called to pray. You cannot force yourself nor the Lord.

***The Father We Need

        Without a father, none of us would be here. A father can guard us, guide us, support us, and inspire us. Unfortunately, not all of us have a good earthly father. As a result, their children go astray and become lost souls. But the great news is that we have a Father in heaven who is perfect and most loving, someone in whom you can totally abandon yourself. Obey him and you'll go to him to enjoy eternal bliss when you leave this world! This has to be the best news ever! So follow Christ to know the Father who knows and will always give you what's best for you. The riddle of life is no more!

***Hatred of God the Father

        You need to know this today!

Sunday, July 5, 2020

*What Makes You Wise and Learned

        In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 11, Jesus blessed the Father for having revealed the mysteries of the kingdom to the littles ons, but not to the wise and the learned. Of course, the wise and the learned of the world are not not truly wise and learned if they do not know or understand the kingdom of God. It is believing in the Lord that makes you truly wise and learned, for you now know the truth.

**Letting the Spirit Give Us Life

        From today's reading 2 from Romans 8, "If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also, through his Spirit that dwells in you." If we belong to Christ, his Spirit dwells in us and we become the temple of the Holy Spirit. Certainly, this Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is capable of making us holy and perfect. Remain in this Spirit to let him transform you anew. Then you can be whatever you want to be and be most pleasing to the Lord at the same time. This is exciting news for all of us!

**Father Rothrock Removed!

        It came as no surprise that Father Rothrock was removed by his bishop. Don't feel sorry for Fr. Rothrock whom the good Lord will surely reward, but feel sorry for Bishop Timothy Doherty who has cowardly caved in to the mob and betrayed all of us. He's the one who needs our prayer.

***Do More for Christ!

        What are we doing in this life? The worst way of living is trying to succeed in this secular world without regard to others. God wants all of us to go to heaven, so it'd be sensible and logical for us to do our best to fulfill this desire of his. If we do our best to obey him, then after our short life expires on this earth, we will be with him forever. It's that simple. Let every moment be your moment of glorifying him, not matter what you are going through, and you are free. The more you surrender yourself to him, the more you are liberated by him and the more he makes everything easy for you to accomplish for his sake. And your reward will be great in heaven! Start living right right now.

Saturday, July 4, 2020

Praying for Evildoers

        The evildoers are afraid to get themselves exposed. They scheme, plot, do their evil deeds, and then run or hide. They are blind or dumb because they think that God does not exist or they can get away from him. So they are to be pitied. God exists and is always merciful—this is the truth we must pray that they will see. 

**God Raising His Good People

        On July 1, I posted Amazing Video. It seems that the Lord has chosen Donald Trump to lead America back to God. As evil has infiltrated and weakened the Church, I see the Lord raising good non-Catholic people to fight for him. I never knew Nick Vujicic until I heard him speaking at a prison in Texas online a few days ago. He was born with no arms and no legs, but his faith in Christ in astounding. You can easily listen to any of his numerous speeches on YouTube to be inspired. I am posting a short video below for you to see and hear what he sounds like.

*****Attention All Catholics*****

             All Catholics must watch his video. We are being tested by God to see if we are hot, lukewarm, or cold right now. Last month, Tim Gordon, a theology teacher at a Catholic high school in Bakersfield, CA, got fired from his job after he referred to Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization on his Twitter account. The diocese did not back him. Recently, when Bishop Barron was asked what he would do to stop the toppling of valuable statues of saints and others, I didn't quite expect him to say that it's the laity's job. We need to place our trust completely in the Lord more than ever! All souls are at stake! (Today, July 7, I learned out that Bishop Barron did stand up to Black Lives Matter. You can see this photo on Twitter. God bless him for humbling himself.)


     
        To show your support for Fr. Theodore Rothrock, email Bishop Timothy Doherty of the Diocese of Lafayette, IN, at bishop@dol-in.org and email Fr. Rothrock directly at parish@setoncarmel.org.

Friday, July 3, 2020

**Irreconcilable Opposites

        God and Satan; good and evil; heaven and hell; being saved and being lost—we can have only one or the other. If you are somewhere in the middle and you don't care, you don't need do a thing. But if you want to be sure that you'll be happy forever later, you'd better start moving toward the good end fast.

***Only Way to Save Ourselves

        Today is Feast of St. Thomas, Apostle. In reading 1 from Ephesians 2, Paul addresses his brothers and sisters: "You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord, in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." So Christ is the one who holds the Church together and makes each one of us a dwelling place of God. At this critical time when Evil has infiltrated much of the world, we must be united to the Lord more than ever to remain holy and strong in order to save mankind from being lost forever!