All Children of God

        If you see that God is our creator and Father and that we all came from the same ancestors, then in the overall picture, we are indeed all brothers and sisters in God's family. And this is the way God sees us. It should help us appreciate and value each other more. 

God Is Cool!

        Today is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Jesus came into the world humbly and quietly without any fanfare. By contrast, leaders, government heads, popular personalties of the world expect the red-carpet treatment, welcome ceremonies, banquets, etc., with much hoopla on their visits. If our God were egotistic and pompous like that, I don't believe he'll ever be able to win any hearts. Unfortunately, the world is full of people like that, and this is why we have so much chaos and unrest. How refreshing and fitting the way the Lord arrived in our world was. He has won my heart.

**Let God Amaze You!*

        Without God's help, you struggle with your sins and are not free. When you and God become one in perfect harmony, all your struggles vanish and you become free. One greatest joy is being amazed by how God can make you so easily anew! Be open to let God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amaze you.

**Only One Life to Live

        Before your leave this world, you should become as holy as possible with God's help. All other goals with the Lord excluded are meaningless. You only have one life to live to make it good!

Confidence in God

        Communion experience. God knows me on all levels, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Therefore, I feel good and know that if I follow him, I can never go wrong.

**Goal of Our Journey

        The goal of all our spiritual activities, including attending Mass, should be to become one with God so that we may follow his will perfectly. 

Be Beautiful to God

        Jesus makes everything beautiful, you included if you'll let him.

***Spiritual Breakthrough for All***

        We struggle spiritually because we are still rebellous to God. Therefore, if you surrender yourself totally to God, with the help of receiving the Holy Eucharist, he wipes out all your struggles. This is the very message God wants me to spread, the purpose of this blog.

*Essential Moment for Salvation

        Today's Gospel reading from Luke 5 was on the call of Simon Peter the fisherman by Jesus. Astonishment seized Simon and his fishing partners at the catch of the great number of fish after Jesus told them where to drop the nets. This happened after they had worked hard all night and caught nothing. Simon Peter fell at the knees of Jesus and said, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man" after he realized that Christ is the Lord. This is a moment that we all need to have to be saved.

*Endearing Yourself to God

        Today's entrance antiphon from Psalm 86: Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I cry to you all the day long. O Lord, you are good and forgiving, full of mercy to all who call to you. We need to cry to God and call on him. Tell him everything that bothers us, even the silly things and those that show our spiritual immaturity. Nothing shall be hidden from him, for he knows all our shortcomings. Sharing your heart with him this way will surely endear you to him, your heavenly Father.

Complaining to God?

        When something bad happens to us, we are likely to ask God why he allows it. We feel that God is not being fair to us. We must remember that we are all sinners who offend God continuously, so we don't have the right to feel that nothing bad should ever happen to us. The fact that heaven and hell exist takes care the fairness question. Once we are in heaven or hell, all the things that happened to us on earth, good or bad, become immaterial. This is how I see it. Instead of complaining to God, We should be aware of our sinful status, trust in God's mercy, and live aiming for heaven.  

God's Ingenuity

        Communion experience. The Lord gave us the 5 senses: sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. It struck me that he was being most ingenious in choosing to unite with us most intimately through taste.

Heed the Warnings

        Hurricane Harvey has just swept through Texas and caused up to $180bn-worth of damage. Now on its heels is Hurricane Irma, even worse than Harvey and projected to hit Florida. Is God telling us something? To me, it is loud and clear that we must repent and return to him or face the worst in the end, worse than all the hurricanes and all the other natural disasters put together. Yet we don't even mention God in our daily conversations. Some possible reasons. You don't believe in God so much yourself. You are afraid that you might "offend" others. Religion is a personal thing, not to be shared in public. You are ashamed of your faith in God. God is of no urgent concern to you right now. All good people will be saved anyway. None of these reasons can back you up at judgment time. Let the fear of God bring you to God. Get to know him until your fear vanishes. Then you are all set for eternity.

Trusting Demons

        In the Gospels, we read about Jesus delivering those who were possessed by demons. In today's Gospel reading from Luke 4, demons came out from many, shouting, "You are the Son of God." They knew that he was the Messiah. In yesterday's reading from Luke 4, a demon cried out in the loud voice, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!" While we live in the material world, demons live in the spiritual world, so they ought to know who Jesus is. Here we have them testifying that Jesus is the Lord and God and we can trust them for that.

Most Delightful Companion and Guide

        Communion experience. The Lord is my delight and with me always. I shall not go wrong.       

*Key to Obedience & More

        In today's Gospel reading from Luke 4, the spirit of an unclean demon in a man recognized Jesus. The man cried out in a loud voice, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God!" With authority and power Jesus commanded the unclean spirits to come out of the man and the demoniac was cured. The spirits knew who Jesus was and obeyed him. If we know who Jesus is well, we would want to obey him too! How much you obey the Lord is proportional to how much you know him. The key to holiness is to know Christ as much as possible. As a matter of fact, everything about you is dependent upon your relationship with God. Surrender to him to let him reveal himself to you fully.

*God Forever New & Incredible

        Communion experience. Even though I knew without a doubt that I was receiving the Lord Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, it's still incredible to me that I was receiving him.

Exciting Spiritual Journey

        My Catholic spiritual journey is exciting because I do not know how the Lord is going to lead me, yet knowing that he will lead me on for my good and his glory. It's knowing the unknown.  

Danger in Following God's Will

        Even though we intend to follow God's will, there is the danger of taking our own good will as God's will. When Jesus showed to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, and be killed and raised, Peter, not wishing such things to happen to his Lord, rebuked him. Jesus then said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do." (Matthew 16.23.) Wow, let us learn how to think as God does first! 

*Beauty of Perfect Obedience

        Today the Lord made me see the true beauty of fulfilling his will, that is, perfect obedience, and the rich reward he will give to those faithful servants, now his friends, and always his children and heirs. 

**How to Be Truly Free*

        You hear about all kinds of freedom . . . freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of choosing to keep or terminate the unborn, freedom of worship, etc. It seems that basically, people demand the freedom of being able to do whatever they wish to do, calling it their right. But all such freedoms are created by man and none of them can set you free. The only true freedom we ever need is the freedom given by God when we submit ourselves to him, for we are only free when we get to do God's will. Think about it.  

**Know God to Know

        Know God and you will know. Here "you will know" means you will know all you need to know, which is the will of God. 

*Unique Lord

        It struck me that when Jesus asked his disciples to deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow him, and spelled out other stringent demands to all, he did it out of love for our good and not in any way to lord it over us. Unlike the lords, gurus, teachers, leaders, kings, heads of state . . . of the world, he had no ego, no ulterior motive, and no self-glorification. He simply reveals what we need to know for us to be saved.

Yearning for God

        Today my heart sees and my soul knows clearly that if everyone would understand, believe in, and follow Christ, we will have the most beautiful world to live in. But, alas, it's no use dreaming about it, only something to pray for. All this makes me yearn for and seek solace in the Lord even more – how much he loves us and how much we need him!

How God Has Made Us

        We can see that St. Augustine is right in saying that God has made us for himself so that our hearts are restless until they rest in him. If you think about it, you'll see the many different ways God has made us. One came to me today: God has made us so that we feel uneasy when we avoid him. This becomes obvious when you talk to people about God.

Spiritual Warfare Time

       In today's crazy, godless world, the spiritual warfare being waged against God is so fierce that we need to hold onto the Lord for dear life to be sure of survival. For Christians, this is not the time to lay back, remain neutral, or be just lukewarm. It's time to do as St. Paul advised in Ephesians 6: Put on the armor of God to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. Stand fast for the gospel of peace. Hold faith as a shield to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit. It's time to fight hell like hell!

*Why Trust God?

        The reason we should trust God is that he sees the overall picture for all eternity, while we only see one thing happening at one time.

Too Big for Heaven?

        The gate that leads to life is narrow. Many cannot go in simply because their big inflated ego makes it impossible for them to get through it. Deflate the ego with humility and things should work out all right. 

No Quick Faith

        I believe that by the time you are aware that Jesus has arrived on Judgment Day, it is already too late to repent and ask for God's forgiveness, for faith would be absent. The time to believe is before you die or the Second Coming, whichever happens first. 

Humorous Observation

        At church this morning, the larger than normal attendance told me that parishioners were there for Saturday morning confession. I noticed that some people who usually sits elsewhere chose to sit in the last row closest to the confession room, hoping to get to confession first. What happened was that this made them almost last in going up to receive Communion. And by the time they came back, those who received Communion first had already lined up for confession. So it's a case of "the last will be last, and the first will be first" or perhaps "hoping to be first will be last, but planning to be first will be first." 

First and Primary Goal

        Today, we heard the parable of the talents from Matthew 25 at morning Mass. The lesson I learned from it was that, as Christians, we must be bold, forward-thinking, and diligent in bearing fruit for the Lord. And the best way to achieve that is by abandoning ourselves in God to get all the guidance, strength, and power we need. It seems that whatever we want to accomplish, this should be the way. Then why not make abandonment in God our first and primary goal and let all things flow thereupon? 

*Challenging Question

        Do you dare to say that Christ had come and died for nothing? To say so is to deny that God loves you and proclaim that Christ is not the Son of God! If you don't dare, then you should submit yourself to him right this moment to acknowledge that God so loves you that he gave his only Son, so that if you believe in him, you might not perish but might have eternal life.

God's Saving Grace

        Many of us after toiling and struggling to find security and happiness in this world will eventually realize that life is empty without God. Even though they have sinned much for many years, this awakening can bring them right back to reconciliation with God. Therefore, many will be saved in the end. Without such grace, not too many of us can make heaven. Better late than never for sure; but still, it's much better early than late, for you would live a happier life now and have a smoother transition to the next life later.

**On Fear of God*

        Those who are afraid of God are precisely the ones who need him to remove the cause of all their fears. Once removed, they will be extremely happy with themselves and God. Fear of God can be both proper and improper. It is proper if it makes you realize that you are a sinner and need God to save you. It becomes improper if you avoid facing it and end up not thinking about that you can lose your soul forever. Just know that God does not set up barriers between you and him; it is you who do not believe that he loves you.

To Be Like Christ

       Communion experience. Christ most holy, make me holy. Christ more perfect, make me perfect. Christ most pure, make me pure. Christ most loving, make me loving. Christ most merciful, make me merciful. Christ most humble, make me humble. Christ most beautiful, make me beautiful. Christ my most beloved, make me be like you.

**God Taking Over*

        Another advantage of being in union with God. You face a problem and feel depressed. If you are in union with the Lord, your problem becomes his problem as well. In fact, you can even see it as entirely his problem. Then you are freed and your depression can even turn into joy. It's the Lord doing everything for you! Praise him.   

**Solving Our Biggest Problem**

          The biggest problem with this generation is running away from God. Non-Christians may have a better excuse than Christians for doing so. We profess to follow Christ, but do not go all the way. The Lord leads, but sometimes we even go the opposite way. It's the rebel in us that should be subdued and banished, or we won't ever be free and have peace. All the more we need to surrender to God and become inseparably one with him. Then after experiencing the joy of union with him, you don't ever want to run away from him again. 

*Be Wise or Remain Foolish

          Today's Gospel reading from Matthew 25 was on the parable of the ten virgins. The kingdom of heaven is like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish and five of them wise. The wise ones prepared their lamps with enough oil, but the foolish ones fell asleep while waiting. At midnight, the bridegroom was coming and the wise virgins went out with their lamps to meet him, but the foolish ones had to go buy more oil for their lamps to make it. When they got back, the door to the wedding feast was already locked – they were shut out for not staying awake. 

          For each of us, there is a door to enter, and that door will be locked the moment we die. It would be extremely wise to enter that door now while we still can.

Hypocrisy in News Media

        Today's majority leftist news media no longer report news honestly; they manufacture or process news. They are good at ignoring what's positive and important and blow up what's negative and insignificant with the political goal of bringing down anyone they don't like. This is being both deceptive and unpatriotic. What I see reminds of what Jesus asked in Matthew 7: Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother's eye. But it's even worse – the new media make up the splinter they purport to see in another's eye! And what about the commandment Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor? Seeing how Jesus denunciated the scribes and Pharisees, it's clear that the assured way to incur the wrath of God is to be a hypocrite. When you pray for our country, don't forget those news media. 

Process of Finding God

        Looking back on how I found my God, I see the process more clearly and can advise those who are still seeking him. Once you have learned of Christ, you want to study him carefully to see if he is believable. When you are convinced intellectually that he might well be the true God and Savior, you need to let your heart take over and accept him as what he claimed himself to be, for God is to be studied and then tasted. You've done your homework and it's time to apply and test the knowledge you've acquired. Without the participation of the heart, you'd still remain an outsider. 

Hard Way, Right Way

        Jesus said, "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? But rather, love your enemies, and your reward will be great." We see that if we follow ourselves to do what we want to do, it's super easy, and there can be no merit in that. But if we give ourselves up to follow God, then we would be doing something pleasing to him and be rewarded later.  

How Ready for God

        Does God attract you more than the world? Would you obey, if Jesus shows up and ask you to follow him? These two questions measure how ready you are for God. Don't forget – you still need to make sure that you'll get to heaven. Too much work? Let God do it for you!

Being Imperfect

        I am sorrowful that I am imperfect before the Lord, for he deserves the best from me. At the same time I am joyful about my imperfection, for only he is perfect and now I get the chance of having him make me more perfect.

*Another Union Benefit

        In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 24, Jesus said to his disciples: "Stay awake! For you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come." Great warning for those who do not take the Lord seriously. For those already in union with him, they are wide awake and fully prepared, for the Lord dwells in them.

God to Be Enjoyed

        When Mary, pregnant with Jesus, visited and greeted her cousin Elizabeth who was pregnant with John the Baptist, the infant in Elizabeth's womb leaped for joy. Similarly, when the thought of the Lord enters our mind, our heart is filled with sweetness. God is to be enjoyed and rejoiced in! 

***How to Find Joy in Christ

        Communion experience. When John the Baptist heard that Jesus had started proclaiming the kingdom of God, he said to his disciples, "He must increase; I must decrease." Now that Jesus had fully completed his mission on earth, we must decrease all the way to nothing – that is, we are to vanish completely in the Lord. This is where and how you'll find your greatest joy.

Looking Good to Whom?

        In today's Gospel reading from Matthew 23, Jesus continued to denounce the scribes and the Pharisees. Verse 27: "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of filth." Jesus certainly portrayed something ugly beautifully. This is an image that easily sticks in my mind. (All you painters out there, take notice.) Our world is full of people who want to look beautiful on the outside to others – how I wish that they know this verse. It's only looking good on the inside to God that matters!

No Hiding From God

         We had verses from Psalm 139 read at Mass:

         Where can I go from your spirit?

         From your presence where can I flee?

         If I go up to the heavens, you are there;

         if I sink to the nether world, you are present there. 

         If I take wings of the dawn, 

         if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea,

         Even there your hand shall guide me,

         and your right hand hold me fast.

         If I say, "Surely the darkness shall hide me,

         and night shall be my light"–

         For you darkness itself is not dark, 

         and night shines as the day.

       Yes, God searches us and knows us. Nowhere can we hide from him. If we hide in darkness, he sees right through it. For he does not see things through the eyes as we do – he just knows everything in our heart. That's why those who hide from God do not have peace in them. Advice: Don't ever play hide-and-seek with God.

"I Am The Bread Of Life"

        Besides "For You Are My God" which I posted on May 14 this year, here is another song that moves me to great joy:

 

*We Are Distinct Beings

        Communion experience on this Memorial of the Passion of Saint John the Baptist. Even in complete union with God, we never become a puppet or robot of God. The Lord has created each of us as a distinct being with our own heart, mind, and will. And this makes our faith and our obedience truly valuable and meaningful to the Lord.