"Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Friday, October 22, 2021

***God the Miracle Worker

        The birth of a new baby is a miracle. It's the Lord God creating a new life that never existed before. Then I thought of how the Lord can transform any one of us into a new creature. This is equally amazing. For one could have been a most wretched sinner and now he is a holy saint. It's all his doing and we should be excited about the Lord's amazing power and grace. 

***Cause of Division

        The Lord God can surely cause division among us. You can say you trust in God and people laugh at you. Then to justify your own action, you say I leave it up to God. Christians even quote Holy Scripture to attack other Christians. This is the cause: we still listen to ourselves and not to the Lord. It comes down to our lack of humility. Shame on us.

**What to Do with What You'll Leave Behind

        We all have possessions in life that mean something or a lot to us, and we think about how they should be taken care of after we leave this world. You certainly wouldn't like to see them disposed of as trash. This is a legitimate concern. Then it seems rather ridiculous to be concerned about that if you are not even sure that you're going to heaven. A natural disaster can happen and wipe out everything you have and there's nothing you can do about it. Once you are gone, people might do anything to what you had and there's nothing you can do about it either. So my advice is to make sure that you are heaven bound first, and then take care of what you'll be leaving behind and let it go. If our intent is to follow Christ all the way, we just don't look back, period.

***Getting Along with Others

        So many people can't get along with others for all kinds of reasons, not knowing or ignoring the fact that Christ can completely change us to make us get along with anyone. Nothing is impossible for God if we let him. The bottom line, if we can get along with Christ the Lord, we'll be able to get along with everyone else and have peace in this world!

Thursday, October 21, 2021

The Miraculous Medal

         I wear the Miraculous Medal and it is truly a miraculous medal.  Originally, it was called the Medal of the Immaculate Conception, also know as the Medal of Our Lady of Good Graces, for the wearer receives many graces from God through Mary.

**Sacrilegious Communion!

        Working for the Devil and receiving the Holy Eucharist—how sacrilegious can you get! 

**Sharp Contrast for Us

        In today's first reading from Romans 6, Paul couldn't have made the contrast starker: For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. We have "working for the Devil" vs. "receiving a great gift from God" and "death" vs. "eternal life."

***Deep Faith in God

        We may feel that we are not doing much for God and still fulfilling what he wants us to achieve. As long as we obey him always, our fruit may not be known to us. Just like prayer, if we pray from our heart, the Lord will accomplish what we pray for, even though we may not see the result at all or not yet. Only in the true God is blind faith a beautiful thing.

**How God Answers Our Prayers

        Since God loves us so much, you can be sure that he will answer our prayers in such a way that would benefit us spiritually the most. But we need to be patient, for only he knows the proper time for us to receive our answers. He'll never abandon us even if we abandon him. So keep your faith always. 

**Cause of Depression

         A sinner who does not know Christ can never be truly happy in this life, for his sins remain with him.

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

**Sinners Beware!

        We are not even holy and feel hurt when others offend us. Now, our Lord is totally holy and blameless, imagine how much he would feel hurt when we offend him! 

**Faith Essential

        Faith is essential to believing in God. Without faith, I can force myself to believe in God as hard as I can and I won't hear from him. God is always open to us. So if we have faith and open ourselves up to him, he easily enters to reveal himself to us and we can even attain full union with him. This is why faith is so precious.

*Jesus the Truth

        I prayed the Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary this morning. The first three mysteries are Resurrection, Ascension, and Descent of the Holy Spirit. If you show me videos of these events, I might question their authenticity, but they were in fact all eyewitnessed by the disciples and in the case of Resurrection and Descent of the Holy Spirit, by a multitude of people. So I believe that they are all true. Besides, if one of them were not, then everything about Jesus cannot be true. Anyway, the best convincing evidence comes down to one's own experience with the Lord. Once you know him, you know that he is the Truth.

***Taking Care of Your Conscience*

        Daily examination of conscience is a good practice to perform before we go to bed so that we may not commit the same sins again tomorrow. The Lord showed me a superior way that offers a permanent solution—that is, you surrender yourself to him more and more daily until you attain union with him. Once there, he will totally take care of your conscience and everything else. It's focusing on his power and not on your own weakness that always works out best for us!

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

**Sign of End Times

         After Jesus had been detained and sentenced to death, no one came forward openly to defend him. After the crucifixion, standing by the cross were only John, Jesus' mother and her sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. Of course, after Jesus rose from the dead, things completely turned around for his followers. Today Christ is being persecuted worldwide, even by his own people, and relatively few come forward to defend him, and we already knew that he had risen from the dead. So our situation is even worse than that of the people of Jesus' days.

***Readying Ourselves for Judgment***

        In Luke 21, Jesus said to his disciples, "Be vigilant at all times and pray that you have the strength to escape the tribulations that are imminent and to stand before the Son of Man." Christians are facing tribulations right now. What we'll all face next is the Lord himself, and this will be our most important encounter with anyone of our entire existence. So we must truly be vigilant and pray that we'll have the strength needed for that moment. The great smart move is to submit ourselves to Christ totally to become one with him now, then we'll have all the strength we need for anything. 

***Doing God's Will a Delight

        From today's Psalm 40, we read "To do your will, O my God, is my delight." Doing God's will does become a delight once you have fallen in love with the Lord. When you are in love, you naturally would want to do everything to please your beloved. Since God is our most holy and loving Father, falling in love with him becomes pure gratifying joy. To get started, all you need to do is open wide to him to let him draw you all the way to his heart.

***Warning to Our Generation

         A serious, urgent message we need to hear, especially our youth.