In today's Gospel reading from Luke 9, Jesus said to all, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?" Here are some of my thoughts. (1) The Lord has already carried his gigantic cross for our sake. How can we possibly not want to carry our own little ones and still wish to follow him? (2) "Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it": No one other than the Lord God can say this and make sense. He is awesome! (3) The last statement "What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?": This was addressed to all of us then and now. We all understand it, but how many of us take it seriously? The Lord leaves it up to us. By the way, we do reap what we sow.
The sharing of my spiritual thoughts and experiences
Thursday, March 6, 2025
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
***Most Foolish Are the Ones Who . . .
live as if God doesn't exist or doesn't know what's going on with them.
*****Miracle Food*****
Communion experience. The heavenly bread nourishes, purifies, and heals the soul, wiping out all fears.
**Holy Habit
No one likes complainers. Thank the Lord for whatever you experience, pleasant or painful, and he'll reward you many-fold.
**Day to Start Looking Beautiful
Ash Wednesday is the perfect day to realize that we are nothing but dust. When we are humble, we look beautiful to the Lord. So this is also the perfect day for us to start looking beautiful to the Father if we are not that pretty yet.
*****Simple Secret We Must Know***
In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 6, Jesus told his disciples to take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that the people might see them; otherwise, they would be like the hypocrites. In other words, we must be egoless and focus upon glorifying the Lord alone. This is the whole secret to peace and salvation: Let God all in and we are in! It's so simple, but are we smart enough to handle that?
*****What the World Misses***
Today is Ash Wednesday. The response from Psalm 51 reads "Be merciful, O Lord, for we have sinned." It would be such an unbelievably beautiful thing if all of us in this world would want to shout this out from the heart! The deep joy the poor world sorely misses is the joy of repentance, that joy of being back in grace with our heavenly Dad!
***Greatest Miracle***
At Mass this morning, I saw that Jesus is not only the King of kings and Lord of lords, he is also our greatest miracle for having such an incredible love for us sinners.
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
**Prayer Priorities*
As Pope Francis' health is faltering, many Catholics are praying for him, but there are also many who are praying for a new Pope who will keep the Church faithful to Christ and unified. I do see that the latter is urgent and encompassing. Now, at the fundamental level is praying for the conversion of all souls. So I'm going go follow this order in my prayer. As for praying for any individual, I'll alway pray for his soul before anything else.
***Abortion Worse than Suicide
Monday, March 3, 2025
***Our Worst Sickness**
Hearing about the messed-up lives of some people I more or less know is prompting me to share the following thoughts. When we catch COVID-19 or have cancer or hit by some other disease, we can become very sick. But this kind of sickness is nothing, for it only impairs your physical health temporarily. You are really sick when you sin against God and your soul is all soiled. We can't see that, but God can, cause and all. I am sure we'd be really shocked to see what he sees. The day will come when he reveals to us how our soul appears to him. The time to prepare for that day so as not to get shocked is right now!
*****What We Must Do Before Death***
In today's first reading from Sirach 17, verse 28 struck me: No more can the dead give praise than those who have never lived; you who are alive and well shall glorify God in his mercies. This makes me think of the things we must do while we're still alive in this world. After we die, we can't do them anymore! Clearly, the most important thing to do on my list is to reconcile with God the Father thru believing in his Son, Christ the Savior, so that we may return to him in heaven after we die.
Sunday, March 2, 2025
***Our Only Savior***
Jesus Christ is it. He is our creator and the only one who truly loves us and can and wishes to save us from sin so that we may have eternal life in heaven. You probably have heard of this many times, but it's the truth! It'd be most wise for you to grab onto him and never let him go while you still can than to feel sorry forever later.
***Power of Prayer
We feel the urgency to pray for world peace, conversion of all sinners, purification and restoration of the Holy Church, etc., and can be overwhelmed and wonder what we can do. The fact is that even if we remain unknown, little, humble and meek, as long as we trust in and pray hard to the God of Christ, we can make a lot of good things happen to change the world. For the Lord truly listens to his children who love him and pray to him from their very hearts. Yes, to God we can be powerful influencers.
Saturday, March 1, 2025
***The Only Trustworthy One
In today's Gospel reading from Mark 10, people were bringing children to Jesus that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked them. Then Jesus said to them, "Let the children come to me; do not prevent them, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it." You see, the world is pretty much godless, so we cannot trust in it al all. On the contrary, God is the absolute truth, so we can and should trust in him like a child. It's so good that we have such a God!
**Fear of God*
In today's first reading from Sirach 17, we heard that God created man in his own image and put the fear of him in him. This is a healthy fear, for the LORD wants us to remain blameless so that we may return to him in heaven. The evildoers get it all wrong; they, remaining in darkness, fear that the LORD would expose them, not realizing that LORD specializes in seeing everything in the dark.
***Call to Believe in Christ Our Savior
Believe in Jesus and you'll be saved from sin and have eternal life—I am sure that many (if not most) of us have heard this. It is truly a unique message that we mustn't dismiss quickly, for there are no similar messages so specifically spelled out like that. We all know that we are sinners. And Christ undeniably existed, rose from the dead, and is the holy God. To me, either he is our Savior or we don't have one. In our evil world, the fact that many do not believe in him only shows that he is the truth. Believe, so you don't deceive yourself.