***Joy-Filled Encounter with the LORD***

        Communion experience. It's a most intimate, most endearing, most personal, most satisfying, most rewarding, and sweetest encounter with the Lord God!!!!!!

**How to Earn God's Trust and Grow Rich**

       Lesson from hearing the Parable of the Talents from Matthew 25 this morning: To the servants who had successfully traded with the master's talents and profited, he said to them, "Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities." To the lazy servant who out of fear and buried the only talent he received so as not to lose it, the master was angry and took it from him and gave to the one who made the most profit. He said, "For to everyone who has, more will be given and he will grow rich; but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away." We Christians need to be faithful in everything we do to earn the Lord's trust. Being fearful and timid just won't cut it. This is how we can grow rich spiritually.

*Cheering Messages

        Today's First Reading verse from 1 Corinthians 1: God chose the weak of the world. The Psalm Response from Psalm 33: Blessed the people the Lord has chosen to be his own. The Gospel verse from Matthew 25: Since you have been faithful in small matters, come, share your master’s joy. Last, the Communion antiphon from Psalm 104: The earth is replete with the fruits of your work, O Lord; you bring forth bread from the earth and wine to cheer the heart. Upon hearing the highlighted parts read, my heart was gladdened each time.

***How to Know God***

         This is how I first accepted Christ. I felt the emptiness of life and met a humble Protestant Christian who lived a simple life and was always cheerful. Because of his example, I finally succumbed and accepted Christ as my Savior. In this case, only my heart was involved. This is how the Apostles came to believe in the Lord. Later when I wondered if I should become a Catholic, I started reading books both for and against Catholicism from the public library at Berkeley. I did that every weekend for over a year and finally knew that I should. Now, the mind was totally involved. So to know and love God, you only need your heart. I know of people who started out using their mind and never converted. The heart has to take over at somer point, and humility can certainly help.

*****The Lord Keeps Us Holy

        Communion experience. United with the Most Holy, to sin is no longer thinkable! 

*****Fantastic Promise*****

        One of today's Communion antiphons, John 6.54: Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, says the Lord, and I will raise him up the last day. This promise should make all of us jump for joy!

***Christ Our Standard*

        From today's first reading from 1 Corinthians 1, we have "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." By Christ we are divided. It logically follows that we have the dualities of good and evil, God and Satan, and heaven and evil.

**Crying to the Lord*

        Today's entrance antiphon from Psalm 86: Turn your ear, O Lord, and answer me; save the servants who trust in you, my God. Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I cry to you all the day long. Do we need to cry ro the Lord all the day long? Yes! Here, cry doesn't mean shedding tears; we simply yearn for the Lord, beg for his mercy, and want to share all that's in our heart with him—motivated by our love for him. So the crying goes on all the day long.

**How to Experience Peace*

         We lose peace when we don't listen to God. So obey him and we have peace. It's elementary.

***Most Satisfying Project***

        Anytime time we finish a worthwhile project, we feel good about it. For example, I used to design and build pieces of furniture for my own home, using basically one radial saw. Looking at the finished product is always a joy. Do you know that it's even a lot more satisfying when you give the Lord God full freedom to work on you as his project and finish up with a most beautiful piece of work that's you? Think about it.

**Refining the Spiritual Life

        We do so many things in life, but how many of them draw us closer to God, to be blunt about it? I myself find it easy to go on YouTube to watch some news and end up watching many other videos that are either entertaining or give useful information on various subjects. Then I realize that time is limited and precious, and if we spend time doing things that do not make us better Christians, we are wasting our time here. So I've decided to bypass all activities that are unnecessary in following Christ, thus making my life purer and more productive.

***Relating to the Lord

        God has created us in his own image so we can get to know him. He loves us to death, wishing to save us from sin so that we may have eternal life in heaven. Meanwhile, he is sustaining us on earth every second and shielding those of us who love him from evil. Know all these truths so that we may relate ourselves to him dearly, as we are no strangers nor outcasts. 

**Connecting with God*

        To know the God of Christ, just keeping our eyes and ears open won't do much good—we need to soften and open our hearts to connect with him! Let giving our hearts to the Lord God be our ultimate goal.

***Going Beyond Our Limits*

        As finite humans, we are limited in every way, but we can be unlimited in loving God! For in loving God, we receive power to love him even more, exceeding all limits. Now the Lord carries us, making living exhilarating.

*****Our Best Treasure***

         Communion experience. The Lord is all mine! He is the only treasure you want everyone else to possess too—he's that good!

**Need to Accept Jesus*

        If what Jesus says inspires or makes sense to you, you should accept and believe in him even if it's demanding or hard to swallow. As a matter of fact, the difficulty you encounter only exposes your need to accept him. The Lord knows our hearts!

***Dealing with the Ego*

        The ego is our nasty enemy. You cannot get rid of it entirely, but you can starve it by not feeding it. As soon as you sense it surfacing, ignorer it outright. This is exactly how we deal with temptations from the devil as well.

*****Face of Jesus and More*****

        Watch this video to 10:06. The best part comes after 6:10, showing the awesome Eucharistic miracles! Time to believe in Jesus the Christ, our Lord God and Savior!