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

Monday, April 8, 2024

***Forgiveness Principle

        Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel's talk on forgiveness: God will forgive us as much as we forgive others. If we forgive others 100%, God will forgive us 100%. A forgiving person is a happy person.         

***Great Miracle of Love***

        Communion experience. If you only realized how the Lord truly miraculously changes the bread and wine into his own body and blood to be given up just for you, you'd be converted instantly by his love.

*****Spiritual Intelligence Test*****

        Keep sinning and you hurt God and destroy your own inner peace. Repent to become holy and the whole heaven rejoices and you enjoy peace now and eternal bliss later. What's your choice?

*****Freedom in Union with God*****

        In union with God, you can do whatever you want and you are free and happy. You see, in union with God you will find joy only in doing his will, and whatever you want to do is always accomplished. 

*****Cause for Rejoicing

        Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. It is the Holy Spirit that made it possible for Virgin Mary to conceive and bear a son, Jesus. Indeed nothing is impossible for God and we can all believe that, for how can God manage the whole universe if there were something he cannot do? So trust in him fully and rejoice, as you can't get any better than having an omnipotent God who is also your most loving Father!

**Dealing with Prophecies*

        If you go on YouTube nowadays, you find so many videos warning us about all kinds of imminent disasters and how we can prepare ourselves for them. Many of these presenters use clickbait headlines or titles. You watch the video and what you expect to hear is not even mentioned. Sometimes you see the image of a well-known religious figure posted, but how the message is related to that figure is not made clear. Truth should always be presented clearly in every respect, but that's not the case at all. Also, these videos use pretty much the same AI voices and stock images and follow the same pattern of starting out a prayer before getting to the main message. By the way, some of the messages are from those whose past prophecies didn't come true. So should I deal with them? I feel that the Lord just wants me to hold onto the big church-approved prophecies such as the Fatima and Akita ones, be as holy as possible, and not be concerned about anything else.

Sunday, April 7, 2024

***Most Rewarding Belief***

        The Gospel came from John 20. Here are the concluding statements of this chapter: "Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that through this belief you may have life in his name." Yes, believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and you'll have life eternal—it is the belief that brings you the greatest possible reward.

***Faith's Greatest Victory

        In today's second reading from 1 John 5, we heard read "The victory that conquers the world is our faith. Who indeed is the victor over the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" I totally agree with the Apostle John here. My faith in Christ has already conquered the world, for the world no longer attracts me. I have even been freed from death as I shall be living forever with Jesus. This has to be the greatest possible victory of my faith!

**Evidence of God's Love**

        I know that the Lord God of Christ loves me. I only need to realize that he's the one who keeps me alive in this life and will keep me living forever in the next.

**Thought of Great Comfort

        I thought of the many things in my past, they came and went away. It hit me that once I have the Lord God, he's with me forever! This greatly comforts me. 

Saturday, April 6, 2024

***Wake-Up Call for America

***What the World Needs to Know***

         Two more good videos from Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel:

 

 

***Sure Way to Holiness***

         I greatly admire the Little Way of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. It's about being both small and doing the smallest things with great love. This is how we can become saints. I bring this up because the Lord made me see at Mass today that if we let everything that happens to us in life draw us to the Lord and make us appreciate and love him more, our spiritual progress will be phenomenal! 

***Lord Dearest

        Communion experience. The Lord is not only my soulmate, he is as dear to me as my own soul.

****Christian Cowardice

        When it comes to controversial topics such as abortion and LGBTQ, many Church leaders and Protestant church pastors just don't want to talk about them. Recently, a number of megachurch pastors in this country were asked about this. Their responses were pretty much the same: They want to focus upon telling people to follow Christ and not on advising them on specific issues. This is sheer cowardice, being afraid of following Christ all the way. You'll have to "give credit to" those Catholic bishops and priests who openly support LGBTQ, those Protestant churches that help pregnant mothers to get abortions, and the openly Satanic worshippers. If true Christians don't speak out more and don't pray and fight harder, whatever chastisement coming from the Lord will only worsen.

**Unsuppressible Joy**

        In today's first reading from Acts 4, the leaders, elders, and scribes ordered Peter and John not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. The two disciples said to them in reply, "Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard." It is true that it is impossible for anyone who has encountered and known the Risen Lord not to tell others about him, whose last instruction to the eleven before his Ascension was "Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature." The joy of the Holy Spirit is unsuppressible!

**Christian Joy and Sorrow**

        Joy, we feel in Christ as he blesses us; sorrow, we feel for the world as it offends him. The joy will last forever, while the sorrow will be short-lived.

**Christ on Our Mind?*

        We say we are Christians, but we think about everything else first except Christ—whereas we should be aware of his holy presence always whenever we think about or do something. Attain union with God through the Holy Eucharist and you'll become aware of his presence at all times.