THE SKEPTIC

 The 1st reading reminded me of my co-participant in a training that I attended in Japan. He is from Korea. The duration of the training is almost one year so it is important to have a good rapport among the participants. Unfortunately, our personalities do not go well together. I sensed something different about him and was confirmed when I found out that he didn't believe that there is a God. He claimed to be an atheist. At first, I was trying to be really extra careful and nice to him and was even injecting discreetly some Christian values and ideas to him whenever we are engaged in a conversation. I should say that next to the challenge of my research work there in Japan, he posed to me a difficulty that I never thought I would be able to handle and surpass. Everyday especially during our 1st few months in Japan, I would pray hard for strength in order to withstand whatever challenges that lie ahead of me during the day. This involves putting up with his manners and attitude on top of the fact that we are from different countries with very diverse cultural background and beliefs. After several weeks of constantly praying and putting on hold my temper and practicing patience, gentleness and courtesy to the best of my ability, I finally succumbed to the pressures I've been experiencing then and blurted out all my repressed and bottled up anger. Whew! You could just imagine what I did by how everybody who saw me reacted. They had the impression that I am the Filipina who can pulverize people with an iron fist like Pacquiao. Although it worked since he stopped bothering me from then on, I also regretted what I did for I know that getting back at someone in that manner is not pleasing before the Lord. I am a professed believer of God and should embody this faith. Just like what the 1^st reading tells us, I am sure that what I did is not a reflection of a person who believes in God. It is imperative that we act what we believe in our thoughts and words. Amen. Hallelujah!

2 Chr 36:14-16, 19-23

...and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD's temple ...Whoever, therefore, among you belongs to any part of his people, let him go up, and may his God be with him!"

Today's psalm encourages us to be firm in our beliefs in God. This is especially true during times when terrible things happen and causes us so much sorrow. We can not help but be full of grief. In spite of all of these we can always look to God and not forget that He never forsakes nor abandon. There are times when we forget or simply keep silent about the goodness done to us by other people and the Lord. Though, it doesn't mean that we don't appreciate or have gratitude to them. What's most important is that every good thing done whether in secret or public can not escape the notice or attention of God who will definitely act according to what an All Knowing, Almighty, Holy and Immortal God deem fit and proper. We have our own personal reasons for not making it known or just simply forgetting about it and making it known. The psalm reading encourages us to always give praise to God in words, thoughts and deeds. It is indeed very unfortunate if we are not aware of how great our God is. There is no greater joy and treasure than having the full knowledge about God. Which makes me think of Tita Neds right now. We both have the computer and the internet connection but Tita Neds doesn't know how to use it. There was a time when my 2 sons were not home for our chat time. Though, they gave her already the instructions to just accept my call to their Yahoo Messenger but she was not able to do it. She's been texting me in my cellphone that she doesn't know how to accept the call so I gave up and forgo of our chat that day. There are times when everything is already within our reach and right before us, what's keeping us from doing the right thing although we're taught how to do it, is that we forget and do not remember.

Amen. Hallelujah! 

P S A L M 

Psalm 137:1-2. 3. 4-5. 6

R: Let my tongue be silenced if I ever forget you!

By the streams of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion. On the aspens of that land we hung up our harps. R. Though there our captors asked of us the lyrics of our songs, And our despoilers urged us to be joyous: “Sing for us the songs of Zion!” R. How could we sing a song of the LORD in a foreign land? If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand be forgotten! R. May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember you not, If I place not Jerusalem ahead of my joy. R.

Have you ever won in a raffle? I did. It feels great! Although this happened 5 years ago I could never forget when I won a $1000 gift card in a Nurse Expo at Long Beach because it was very memorable and significant in many ways. I never thought that my name will be drawn. I was just sitting there looking after the bags and the tons of souvenir items of my nurse companions when my name was called. I can't believe my ears! From out of the many entries, my name was picked. Not just that, I still do not have my license at that time so I needed to give them proof that I am a USRN. It was good that I brought the letter from the California Board of Registered Nursing stating that I already passed and they were kind enough to accept it. Up to this time that gift card remains useful for me because I bought a laptop and a camera out of it. I felt that it was exactly what I wanted to buy back then order to communicate with my family in the Philippines and of course to make a journal of my daily walk with God such as this one to proclaim His word and His glory. God knows exactly what we will need even before the need arises and for that I say, "It is indeed a gift of God!" It is imperative that we act what we believe in our thoughts and words. The story about my Korean co-participant in Japan did not stop there. It is not yet over until God says so. God arranged for something else to happen. Another participant got very sick and was hospitalized and we ended up visiting her together. On our way to the hospital, I started a conversation with him which unexpectedly led to his unbelief in God and the theory of the evolution. Judging from where it was going I thought it would end up in disaster that is why I am still in awe at how things happened the way it did. I could never understand or figure out up to this time how I was able to speak those words that I spoke to him. It was as if someone else was speaking in my behalf. Instead of opposing his ideas I just found myself even agreeing with him. This is what I said, “Let us say the evolution theory is true, but consider even for a moment the hardship with my research work wherein I needed to transform the microorganism or simply put it as, improve the strain. I need not change the microorganism which was a fungus to another microbe like a bacterium but just introduce a tiny bit (DNA) of characteristic to improve it. Just the thought of changing fungi into bacteria is already an impossibility that I could never even think about since the transformation alone and the maintenance in itself is already hard work. I told him I've been putting all my efforts and whatever intelligence left in my brains after slaving myself to work beyond midnight just to succeed in my experiments and there was no room for mistake or even a short period of neglect for timing and strict maintenance is a must or else everything I worked for will be gone. I asked him in the light of his being a science researcher himself, that if he believes that humans evolved from a single cell to a very complicated human body like we have right now, a genius must have sustained, maintained and watched over our evolution to our present condition, wonderfully made and crafted by none other than the greatest Genius, Researcher and Scientist of all time.

As I was talking to him, his face suddenly lit up as if he was like a person who was losing his way and finally found it. He said, "Well I guess that was what I've been waiting to hear, I should say." From then on, he became nice and polite to me for the rest of our stay in Japan. He even went with me to mass in a Catholic Church after that. Amen. Hallelujah!

Eph 2:4-10

...For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast. For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

God in today's gospel proclaims the summary of His great love that is being conveyed in the bible. If God suffered His only Son for our sake. I do believe that everything is possible with Him and there is really no doubt that He can move the heavens and the earth that even the simplest task of sending His angels to guard and protect is something that God is really able to do. Father Fernando taught us the acronym HEALS. H stands for hope, E = experience God's love and express to others, A= adore God, L= love, S= sacrifice. When will we allow this truth to get through our thick heads and really sink deep into our system. So that we will no longer doubt His great love for us. Who among you parents would be willing to sacrifice their own child for the sin of another? God did that and shed very precious blood for our salvation. When people experience genuine and sincere love despite all of their imperfections then we can somehow get the picture of what today's gospel is trying to convey. Although not the fullness of its meaning and depth, this reminds me of a movie entitled, "The Cutting Edge". It is about a young lady who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. She practically had everything a young lady like her would wish for. Despite of it she remained to be rude, selfish and stubborn until that eventful night when this man professed his love to her even after all the things he found out about her. It only took a minute or less for her to realize it and changed everything which also led to their winning the gold medal in the Olympics. Those who have seen the movie might know what I’m talking about. This is a very shallow comparison I should say to the tremendous love of God for us to suffer His Only Begotten Son to die on the cross for our sake. Since we are still bound to the physical dimension of this world there is only partial understanding of the spiritual and all other aspects that define love. We could only hope to grasp its meaning within the context of our limited capacities. We look forward that someday when we finally come to the final and appointed day in our life when our soul separates from our physical body and thus attain the fullness of this understanding we find ourselves in the safety of His love and not very far from it to enjoy this gift of eternal life. Hoping too, on that day that the word "might" in today's gospel passage which I quoted below will be omitted and finally make eternal life a reality for all of us. We are just set to discover wonderful and marvelous things that are beyond our imagination if we let God. We pray that if we were skeptics may we eventually become believers.  The gospel today contains the most famous words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” The purpose of this gospel is stated in Jn. 20:31: “These things have been written so that you may go on believing that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name.”  Everything comes through God’s grace in the form of the scriptures as it is written from of old and revealed right before our very eyes and within our hearing. We owe everything to God and nothing else can ever be enough for a God who loves us with such impact and intensity. The gospel is an evidence of the concrete relationship of the scriptures in the Old Testament with the New Testament. They are interconnected in a very amazing way. If there's one thing that amazes me even more, it is the thousands of years apart in terms of BC (Before the time of Christ) and AD (Anno Domini/During and after Christ) that separates these events and the tremendous power of God that defies the length of time by connecting them and allowing every single thing in the entire history of mankind to fall into its perfect place and pattern. According to Dr. Scott Hahn, the nature of Jesus’ death on Calvary is a sacrifice. All Christians recognize this sacrifice as a mystery. Jesus offered His life on the cross as a supreme sacrifice but most Christians don’t realize how difficult it would have been for 1^st century Jewish Christians to come to that conclusion. Why? If we were there on Calvary on Good Friday even the most devout Jewish disciples would have been unable to describe that experience as a sacrifice because for them there’s really nothing more to it than a Roman execution. It took place outside of the walls of Jerusalem, far from the place where there were no odors and priests and thus there is no sacrifice. And yet in one generation all Christians came to conclude that indeed what Jesus suffered on the cross was the supreme sacrifice. How did they reach such a conclusion? Only by looking at Good Friday in a light of what Jesus did on Maundy Thursday. When He instituted the Eucharist He didn’t simply celebrate the feast of the Passover He established the Passover of the New Covenant and it was more than just words. He took bread and said, this is my body which is given up for you and then he took the chalice and spoke about how this blood of the new and everlasting covenant will be poured out for the remission of sins do this in remembrance of me. Was this just a rhetoric and ritual or is there a reality and truth to what Jesus said and did. The proof that Jesus really gave us His body and allowed his blood to be poured out for the remission of sins is precisely given to us there on the cross. But the nature of Jesus’ death on the cross is illuminated as a sacrifice only by retracing and looking at it in the light of the Passover of the new covenant. The Eucharist and Calvary are inseparable.  There are 2 sides to the same sacrifice. Jesus shows us that in His death He did not lose His life for in the Eucharist He already made His life a gift of love. This love is what conquers death and the conquest of death is what occurs on Good Friday. As Catholics we have a lot to teach other Christians who do not understand the mystery of the Mass. For indeed it’s the Eucharist that illuminates the mystery of Jesus’ death as a sacrifice just as Jesus’ death shows us that the Eucharist is more than just mere ritual but is the mystery of Jesus high priestly act of self giving love.  Amen. Hallelujah!

 John 3:13-21

13 Jesus said to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.