**Garabandal Messages and Prophecies*

'        I am sharing this rather long video here, but it's worth watching to learn through the Holy Mother what the Lord God wishes us to do to save ourselves. The warnings are serious. We must pay attention or perish. Nothing new here, but we need to hear the messages again and again as our hearts have been so hardened. There are two more good videos about Garabandal I posted on June 20 and July 2 last year. You may want to look at them too if you haven't seen them  yet.

**If You Are Truly Smart

         Without God's guidance, we'd live in the unknown, not knowing how we got here and where we're going. With Christ the Lord, what's going to happen next may not be immediately clear, but where we are going we always know. We are no longer lost—this is the big difference. We must stop playing hide-and-seek with the Lord, for he knows everything and we will surely lose any game we play against him. Besides, beating God at hide-and-seek would mean that we remain lost forever. If you are truly smart, you would simply turn to the Lord and say "Here I am, Lord. I am ready to serve you." 

True Wisdom

          Let the Lord fill you with his wisdom, then you'll be wise in all things. 

**Man's Ongoing Rebellion Against God

         In today's reading I from Genesis 4, Adam had relations with his wife Eve, and she conceived and bore Cain, their first son. Later she bore Abel, another son. In the course of time both Cain and Abel brought an offering to the LORD. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not. Cain greatly resented and was crestfallen. So the Lord said to Cain: "Why are you so resentful and crestfallen. If you do well, you can hold up your head; but it not, sin is a demon lurking at the the door: his urge is toward you, yet your can be his master." This is exactly what today's evildoers need to hear from the Lord! Evil was present then is still here today. I've never seen this many resentful and crestfallen people in this country alone. None of them have been seen walking or talking with their head held up high—they are already in cahoots with the Devil and serving him! One day, this spiritual warfare will be over and we who are with Christ will enjoy universal peace triumphantly with him forever. (By the way, Cain did kill his brother Abel later.) 

*Living a Meaningful Life or Not

          In today's second reading from 1 Corinthians 10, Paul advises, "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God." This may sound cliché or boring to some, or even repel others, but the alternative is to do everything for you own glory, which can lead to eternal death. I can testify to you that doing everything for the glory of God has not only given me the purpose of life, but also made my life exciting and most rewarding. To think that following Christ is boring is one of the biggest misconceptions of our time. Without Christ, you are merely going though the empty motion of living a life without purpose, direction, and true meaning.

***The Joy of Salvation

              Today's reading from Psalm 32 has this verse as the response: I turn to you, Lord, in time of trouble, and you fill me with the joy of salvation. It seems that after we have heard about our salvation so many times for so long, we no longer feel this joy. If we appreciate and think about our salvation, it should keep us excited our whole time on earth! The Lord is waiting for us in heaven. The only reason I don't want to leave this world yet is because there is still work for me to do in serving him. Eternal happiness can wait; it's not something that will ever pass away. Think about it and you feel sorry for those who are lost, but happy for yourself and all others who are in the Lord. The end is going to be bitter sweet, but that will pass too. After that, it'll be everlasting bliss! Now you should definitely feel the joy of salvation. 

***Letting God Work Effectively

         You wish to attain union with God, to really get to know him, or to abandon yourself entirely to him. So you are determined and try hard to achieve it, but that's not going about it the right way. The effective, effortless way is to relax, go passive, and open yourself up to God. Then he sees you and will come quickly to fulfill your desire. Picture the Lord at the top of a high steep mountain and you want to reach him. You can try climbing the mountain, struggling all the way, or just let him see that you'd like go to him and wait for him to send down a speedy tram to carry you to him in no time. As I'd said before, the password for logging into God was "passive." To let God work effectively in you life, just yield yourself to him completely.

*Shielded from Evil

           Today's Communion experience. I received the Holy Eucharist, the body and blood, the soul and divinity, of the Lord. I knew that where he dwells, there cannot be evil. I knew that I was shielded from all evil and that no evil thought could possibly germinate in my heart. Praised be my Lord!

***Only Info You Need to Know About Yourself

           We are all citizens of different countries. We may belong to the upper or lower echelons of society. Our families may be rich or poor, educated or illiterate. Lately, many people are taking DNA ancestry tests to get an ethnicity estimate. Does it really matter that you are 25% Irish, 4% Korean, 1% Ghana, etc.? To me, you only need to know that you belong to Christ and to the family of your heavenly Father. Forget everything else about you, for they no longer matter.

**Our Sin Affects All (Be a Saint!)

        When we sin, we directly or indirectly cause others to sin too and our sin becomes more serious than we think. So we need to be concerned about not only our own, but also all souls. All the more we need to be blameless before God. You can't regard sinning to be your own business, for it offends God and the whole heaven knows about it. Then, keep sinning and you not only draw others away from God, you get yourself condemned in the end as well. God wants to save you and the whole world, so let him turn you into a saint. It'll be so easy for him to accomplish that, once you give him the full green light.

**Not Quite Successfully Transformed

         Christ can completely transform us, making us anew, yet it's often hard to tell Christians from non-Christians. So many Christians hold onto their old ways, following the tradition or the custom of the world. All their empty gestures may appear OK, but not truly genuine. Christ wouldn't have acted like that. Of course, you can say that God's ways and thoughts are way higher than ours, but to let the Lord transform us is to make us think and act more like him. And this is not obvious, when you look at how these Christians live and act. So we are not perfect yet, showing that we have not surrendered ourselves completely to God yet. This is the fundamental challenge all Christians face and must meet if we are to be successfully transformed.

**Folly of Much Ado About Nothing

        Much Ado About Nothing is the title of a comedy by Shakespeare. It describes so well what most people are doing nowadays. They lead their lives and do their things divorced from God altogether. They are busy and occupied, but unknowingly drifting away from God further and further. It there ever will be an awakening, it will most likely come as a shock, still infinitely better than receiving ultimately the worst shock without an awakening.   

**How to Remain Undefiled

        In today's Gospel reading from Mark 7, Jesus said to his disciples, "What comes out of the man, that is what defiles him. From within the man, from his heart, come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. All these evils come from within and they defile." If you agree to what the Lord had said here, then give your heart to him so that you may remain clean from now on.

***To Be with Christ***

        When I am physically suffering, I realize that I am just tasting a tiny, tiny bit of what Jesus experienced when he went through the Passion. Nevertheless, this realization unites me more to the Lord and is a good thing. To go further, if we truly want to be with Christ at all times, we need to experience what he is experiencing at all times.

*****Abandonment-to-God Time

          Yesterday I blogged that I fell while walking. I felt OK at the time, but started to feel the pain afterwards. My left shoulder already had a tendon injury that had never completely healed, so I had been relying on my right arm most of the time. Now, after this fall, the left shoulder has gotten a lot worse; I could hardly lift the arm up high. My left chest is hurting too from the impact of the fall. I had a worse fall some years back. It was the right chest that got impacted badly; it took a month for the pain to go away. I expect it'll be at least a month this time, as I am now older. At a time like this, I must reprioritize my activities. I'll probably stop walking for a while and not do anything that requires the use of both arms. It is the time to pray even more, perhaps get in touch with some friends and relatives to tell them about Christ. When you realize that what you can do is limited, you can see that it is the perfect time to abandon yourself in God! This happens again when you are dying and see that abandoning yourself to God is the only sensible thing left for you to do. But why wait until such moments? Experience the freedom of letting go in God right now. We may suffer physically, but we are free to enjoy even more freedom spiritually!

***Be Aware of Body and Soul

        Let's be absolutely clear that each of us inhabits a perishable physical body on earth and possesses an unperishable soul that lives on forever. Often when our body is giving in to death, we see that as the end of our life and forget that we still have an everlasting soul that's about to begin living a new life, the real life! Realizing this can help us live a much happier and fruitful life. Otherwise, you are just a lost soul, not knowing where you are going. Know Christ the Lord and Savior to let him put your soul on the path to heaven while you still have your physical body.

**God Not Finished with Us

        Another good message from Fr. Corapi to share. 

**No Nonsense Teaching

        It is so refreshing to hear a concise, clear, to-the-point message than some long-winded, confusing, convoluted teaching.