**The World, God's Eyesore

        A couple of church friends just passed away. They both had served the Church well. One had suffered poor health for years. The other passed away rather quickly after an unexpected health issue was uncovered. May they rest in the Lord's peace now. Meanwhile, I had just witnessed some new births, not human, but still amazing. My older son lives next to me. He and I and one neighbor together own a bunch of alpacas to roam our adjoining lots to keep the weeds down. One alpaca gave birth to a baby just a few weeks ago after a gestation period of 11 months. Yesterday and the day before, two more baby alpacas were born. Births are always amazing to watch. Today is quite a beautiful day, but the world remains ugly in sin. The righteous are fighting the evil ones. With one group marching toward heaven and the other toward hell, a lot of people are caught in the midst still not knowing which way to go. Not a happy or pretty sight. Life should not continue like this. The world will need to turn to God, repent, do penance, and pray, pray, pray, if it ever wants to look good to God and save itself.

****Luckiest Person in the World!

           I've blogged over 11,000 times since the blog took off in 2010. It has to be the Lord's doing, for it would've been impossible for me say so much about the Lord on my own. This month, you could say that I have fallen behind my quota as I have so far received less messages than usual. Zero, yesterday. I realized that should the Lord want me to stop blogging, he would simply stop depositing any messages in my heart. All the more I saw that the blog was all his doing. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. What is important is that we obey the Lord always, doing whatever he wishes us to do for his sake and at the same time not being attached to what we happen to be doing. Using my blog as an example, if the Lord wants me to quit blogging, then so be it. It's what God wants you to do, never what you want to do for yourself. Then you become the luckiest person when you and God happen to always want to do exactly the same thing. 

**Lessons Learned in Suffering

        Twelve days ago, I blogged about my fall. I'd learned these lessons. (1) Being human, no matter how careful we are, we still end up making all kinds of mistakes. So it makes sense for us to abandon ourselves in God now, not until we becomes totally helpless. (2) In suffering myself, I realized how horrifically Christ had suffered for my sake, and this united me to him even more. (3) I also realized that God had made us so that we all need a Mother who can look after us, and the Lord had given us his own mother to us to be that ideal Mom before he died on the cross. I am proud to be a mama's boy when my mama is so holy, beautiful, and perfect. I started calling on her a lot and felt greatly consoled. She's now with me always as she is always with her divine Son.

**To Be Heartless and Foolish

        I read today's Gospel reading from Luke 9 and saw exactly what Jesus said which I quoted in my last post. But before he said that, he said to his disciples: "The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised." The Lord was letting us know that he's going to do all the work necessary for us to receive eternal life. This was a huge price for him to pay. He has sown fully so that that we may reap fully. If you can prove that he is false in any way and believe that you have no sin and don't need salvation, then dismiss him by all means. If not and you still ignore him, then you have absolutely no heart and are being extremely foolish and are to be pitied. 

**Sad Rejection of Truth*

          In today's first reading from Deuteronomy 30, the Lord made it clear through Moses to the people that if they choose to love him, walk in his ways, and obey his commandments, he would bless them and they would have life. But if they turn away, do not listen, adore and serve other gods, they would perish. It amounts to choosing life or death. It couldn't be any clearer. In Matthew 16 (and Luke 9), Jesus said to all, "Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever losers his life for my sake will find it. What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?" It's so sad that the people of the world to this day continue to turn a deaf ear to the truth! They just reject anything that they think would inconvenience them. How self-centered can you be!

**Living for God in Secret

        If money is the root of all evil, then ego is the biggest cause of our unhappiness. In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 6, Jesus said to his disciples: "Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father." In other words, we are to live for God alone in secret and never for ourselves. The is the secret of shedding our ego and attaining inner peace. 

***Responsible for Our Own Destiny

        To get back in God's good graces, you only need to recite verses 3-6ab of today's Psalm 51: Have mercy on me, O God, in your goodness; in the greatness of your compassion wipe out my offense. Thoroughly wash me from my guilt and of my sin cleanse me. For I acknowledge my offense, and my sin is before me always. Against you only have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight. It takes less than half a minute to say the above from your heart to the Lord and you restore your relationship with God and change your eternal destiny! Getting back to God can be so easy. If it's hard, you are the one making it so!

***Tragic State of Our World***

        Today is Ash Wednesday. The first reading from Joel 2 begins as follows: Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart, with fasting, and weeping, and mourning; rend your hearts, not your garments, and return to the LORD, your God. This is exactly what the world needs to hear, do, and feel, or face even greater chastisements. We need to weep and mourn for our own sins. We need to feel the pain in our hearts for having turned our back on the Lord? Why are we not getting it? Why are we so thick-headed? God has been most patient, but we are relentless in pushing him to the limit. The cup has already been running over. If we don't return to God, we'll be heading straight for our own extermination, and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.  

**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.