Don't worry, the Lord will understand you if you do it. Have
you heard this famous and overused line before? Sometimes we Christians are
like that. We tend to rationalize and justify every action that we do.
Although, it is already obvious that among all the choices that we have in life
we can always decide for the ultimate good we still settle for something less
or worse choose what is bad. Have you been into a situation wherein nobody
seems to understand or agree with your decision? There is no reason to fret for
we have a God who knows exactly what we're going through, He is always with us
to love and support us. Somehow, this also reflects the message of Bro. Bo
Sanchez a while ago. He said that there are 3 Cs that we obtain when we go
through trials and sufferings. The first C is comfort. As the bible tells us,
blessed are those who mourn for they will be comforted. Come to think of it but
this is in fact very true. Looking back at those times when we are in sorrow and
pain there will always be something or someone that comforts us. The 2nd
C is character, we develop it whenever we are put through difficulties. The 3rd
C is compassion. We become better person as we emerge from one trial after
another. The analogy presented to us is in the form of a person who heard God’s
voice telling him to push on a big boulder. Every single day he would push on
it but he would not see it budge even a bit. Until finally after a month he
said to God that he is not doing it anymore for nothing seems to happen. The
Lord answered him and said that something happened for he developed muscles.
This is when Bro. Bo mentioned about our hope in God especially at times when
we feel like nothing good is happening to us. Our hope has something to do with
our perception and position. He said that when he was still in his 20s and
heard someone say that he is 40 he thought that the person is old but now that
he is in his mid 40s he thinks that the person is young. The same is true when
we are presently experiencing a trial and in deep pain and agony but after
going through it we look at things differently. This should be our position
with God although we may be in a difficult situation we should always have that
attitude and perception of hope which is to position ourselves as if we’ve
already gone through the pain for we have a God who will surely see us through
it. In our journey of faith as a
Christian many people would say and agree that it is like a bed of roses but
not without the thorns. We get a lot of that as we travel through life most
especially if we have committed ourselves to serve God. I like this saying,
"Life is God's gift to us and what we make of our life is our gift to
God." We have to strive living our life as in this song, "Lord I
offer my life to you, everything I've been through use it for your glory. Lord
I offer my days to you, lifting my praise to you as a pleasing sacrifice, Lord
I offer you my life. All that I am, all that I have, I lay them down before you
Oh Lord, all my regrets, all my acclaims, the joy and the pain, I'm making them
yours. Things in the past, things yet unseen, wishes and dreams that are yet to
come true, all of my heart, all of my praise, my heart and my hands are lifted
to you. What can we give that you have not given. And what do we have that is
not already yours? All we possess. All these lives we're living, that's what we
give to you, Lord." Not everybody would be as receptive and pleasant as we
wanted them to be. Just like Paul in today's 1st reading who was greeted with a
lot of setbacks and difficulties, we have to continue and not be discouraged.
Nor should we take it personally against the people who have harmed us. It's
kind of easy to say but hard to do. This is the challenge that Paul leaves us
with and not everyone is brave enough to take and truly commit to it. Let us be
aware that this task that the Lord our God is entrusting to us is offered to
all without exception. Amen. Hallelujah!
2Timothy 4: 10-17
...Alexander the coppersmith did me a great deal of harm;
the Lord will repay him according to his deeds. 15 You too be on guard against
him, for he has strongly resisted our preaching. 16 At my first defense no one
appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them!
17 But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the
proclamation might be completed and all the Gentiles might hear it.
There is really none like our God. We can have all the
things that this world can offer but in the end we will still be wanting and
not satisfied if we do not have God in the center of our life. The Lord has
always been faithful and not a single moment would He ever not be. We should
have the confidence always of a beloved child of God and the honor of being on top
of God's creation. The Lord is always ready to extend His help and shower His
blessings on us, His people. The question is, are we willing to accept His help
and stay within the circle of His blessings? This question is very critical and
sometimes left unanswered, neglected and taken for granted. When we choose to
continue in the path that does not lead us closer to God the answer is clear,
it is a no. When we direct our actions in things that draw us closer to God
then it is a yes. If this is so true for us then we ought to do as the psalm
reading today tells us. All our thoughts, words and actions should reflect how
great our God is. As humans we tend to downplay God's role in our life because
we subject our experiences to human terms and conditions. We are still bound by
the limitations of this world we are in and we can't help it. We sometimes just
go with the flow and get carried away by the pressures imposed to us by our
present and existing situations. Our study of World History tells us of the different
and various kinds of kingdoms and dynasties which ruled throughout the length
of time. None of the most famous and powerful of these kingdoms still stand
today and remain as influential to the entire world as it used to be. This
tells us one thing that earthly kingdoms will eventually cease to exist. Only
God's Kingdom prevails for eternity. Sometimes we might even have to come to a
point when we look and sound strange for
others or even suffer the ridicule of not just others but the very people who comprise
our circle of close family, relatives and friends. What matters most is that we
ought to give God what He rightly deserves, to be extolled and praised forever.
Today's psalm tells us that we owe God more than just plain courtesy for His
goodness. Whenever we watch box office hit super hero movies, news about it
spread like wildfire and the promotion for it is international that almost
everybody around the globe gets to know about it and watch it. If only we can
devote that same fervor and enthusiasm in spreading word about the greatest
Super Hero of all times, Jesus and make a decision to watch His life unfold and
be part of our own, then we can someday be a part of God's great Kingdom in
Heaven. If we truly desire this then we should always be mindful of the words
of God written in the bible since it is indeed what its acronym stands for
which is B - basic I-instructions B-before L-leaving E-earth. It is very
important that we have read and understood well what is written in the bible
before we exit this world. This reminds me of the video games that my sons used
to play. When they finish one level they have to enter into the next level
which is more difficult and so on and so forth until they reach the ultimate
task and win the final battle. It was like they needed to be well prepared and
more skillful for each level. This somehow reminds us of how we should approach
our final day here on earth. The gate of heaven has been opened and made
accessible for us, there is no question about it but the question is, "Are
we ready and able to go through it?" As in Eph. 6:13, "Therefore, put
on the armor of God, that you may be
able to resist on the evil day and, having done everything, to hold your
ground." Another thing is we have no idea when will that day come because
we really do not know the time or the hour. One thing for sure, the only way to
go through it is by being well prepared for it. Thus I wanted to share this
story which I got from an email.
Once upon a time there was a rich King who had four wives.
He loved the 4th wife the most and adored her with rich
robes and treated her to the finest of delicacies. He gave her nothing but the
best.
He also loved the 3rd wife very much and was always showing
her off to neighboring kingdoms. However, he feared that one day she would
leave him for another.
He also loved his 2nd wife. She was his confidant and was
always kind, considerate and patient with him. Whenever the King faced a
problem, he could confide in her, and she would help him get through the difficult
times.
The King's 1st wife was a very loyal partner and had made
great contributions in maintaining his wealth and kingdom. However, he did not
love the first wife. Although she loved him deeply, he hardly took notice of
her!
One day, the King fell ill and he knew his time was short.
He thought of his luxurious life and wondered, I now have four wives with me,
but when I die, I'll be all alone.'
Thus, he asked the 4th wife , 'I loved you the most, endowed
you with the finest clothing and showered great care over you. Now that I'm
dying, will you follow me and keep me company?'
'No way!', replied the 4th wife, and she walked away without
another word.
Her answer cut like a sharp knife right into his heart.
The sad King then asked the 3rd wife, 'I loved you all my
life. Now that I'm dying, will you follow me and keep me company?'
'No!', replied the 3rd wife. 'Life is too good! When you
die, I'm going to remarry!'
His heart sank and turned cold.
He then asked the 2nd wife, 'I have always turned to you for
help and you've always been there for me.
When I die, will you follow me and keep me company?'
'I'm sorry, I can't help you out this time!', replied the
2nd wife. 'At the very most, I can only walk with you to your grave.'
Her answer struck him like a bolt of lightning, and the King
was devastated.
Then a voice called out: 'I'll go with you. I'll follow you
no matter where you go.'
The King looked up, and there was his first wife. She was
very skinny as she suffered from malnutrition and neglect.
Greatly grieved, the King said, 'I should have taken much
better care of you when I had the chance!'
In truth, we all have the 4 wives in our lives:
Our 4th wife is our body. No matter how much time and effort
we lavish in making it look good, it will leave us when we die.
Our 3rd wife is our possessions, status and wealth. When we
die, it will all go to others.
Our 2nd wife is our family and friends. No matter how much
they have been there for us, the furthest they can stay by us is up to the
grave.
And our 1st wife is our Soul. Often neglected in pursuit of
wealth, power and pleasures of the world.
However, our Soul is the only thing that will follow us
wherever we go. Cultivate, strengthen and cherish it now, for it is the only
part of us that will follow us to the throne of God and continue with us
throughout Eternity. Amen. Hallelujah!
Psalms 145(144),10-11.12-13.17-18.
R: Your friends make known, O Lord, the glorious splendor of
your Kingdom.
10 Let all your works give you thanks, O LORD, and let your
faithful ones bless you. 11 Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom and
speak of your might. (R) 12 Making known to men your might and the glorious
splendor of your kingdom. 13 Your kingdom is a kingdom for all ages, and your
dominion endures through all generations. (R) 17 The LORD is just in all his
ways and holy in all his works. 18 The LORD is near to all who call upon him,
to all who call upon him in truth. (R)
We are blessed to have a line up of brilliant and anointed
preachers who share their knowledge and zeal for the word of God in EWTN
(Eternal Word Television Network). But there are only a few people who take on
this mission of spreading the word of God because we don't fully realize this
as baptized Christians, we are all sent by Christ on this mission. We should
accept God's invitation and receive the word of God by living its message. We
have a great responsibility in our hands and should respond to His Word for
indeed the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few. The time is now to
become part of this great harvest. Jesus knows exactly the kind of life we are
headed to if we heed His call. What He expects from us is courage to go on and
He will do the rest. Let us trust that God is truly the Good Shepherd who never
abandons nor forsakes the lambs in the midst of the wolves. We, Catholics
believe that God gave human beings reason although it sometimes gets darkened
by sin but still human reason can figure out some things. One of the things
that human beings figure out without God having to reveal it, is that human
beings need to meet 4 qualities to be deemed a human being. The philosopher,
before even Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, had this figured out. We find it
mentioned in Wisdom 8:7, the 4 virtues or qualities are also called the hinge
virtues because it is where all the other virtues or qualities of good people
would hinge. The word cardinal means hinge. The Cardinals who surround the Pope
are the doorway to the Pope. They are also the ones whom he rely the most for
advice. Everything else depends on the cardinal virtues. (Prudence or wisdom,
justice, temperance and courage or fortitude) Prudence is the ability to make
right decisions in complex situations. They are decisions that lead to the best
and right thing. Without this we can be in big trouble. We’ve got to be able to
decide in a situation that we’re in what the right thing to do which is the
best thing to do. How do we get something done? There are some folks who
probably just can’t figure out what to do. There are other folks who look at
the problem and they can figure out a solution. It’s a core and they execute
that core. It’s practical wisdom. We’ll find in the Book of Proverbs a lot of
things about wisdom even in Sirach, Ecclesiastes and all the wisdom literature
in scriptures. We can also find all the other 3 cardinal virtues, like justice
which means giving each person his or her due. We all know even as kids
instinctively how important justice is. The first thing that a kid cries out as
soon as he learns how to talk if he has brothers and sisters is “Not fair, he
got more than I did” or “You ask me to do more than what that person is doing.”
This is because we have instinctively or natively offensive justice. Each
person has rights and ought to get their due. There’s also another part of
justice that we forget, that is, we have obligations and duties to everyone. A
person who is unjust is not a good person. To be just, we need to control our
passions. Temperance is a virtue that balances and controls our passions. It is
like controlling our desire for that last piece of cake if we know that it
belongs to our sister. In order to be just, we’ve got to control our appetites.
Make our appetites come into line with justice, truth and goodness. We’ve got
to have that balance in our life in order to be a good and effective person.
Temperance makes this happen. We also have to be courageous. If we are not
courageous then every time a difficulty arises we’re going to shrink back. If
there’s any danger involved in doing the right, just and wise thing then we’re
just going to crack out and find an excuse because we’re afraid. Courage or
fortitude helps us to master fear and not let fear keep us from doing what’s
right. We’ve got have all these things but here’s the problem. When Adam &
Eve decided to sin they let loose a weakness into our race and nature that
impacts all of us. We call it original sin. Sin is not so original, we just
copy what other people have done. There’s nothing creative about sin. Adam &
Eve’s sin was the only original sin. What they did has an impact on us. By
weakening their own nature, sin weakened man’s nature. They passed on to us a
weakened nature. They separated themselves and the whole human race from
friendship with God and were born into that. There’s a tendency in our nature
to go on a downward drift, a drift off course and a tendency to a great degree
is dealt with through grace. How do we get grace? Through the death and
resurrection of Jesus, God has made possible for us, healing of our humanity.
He gives us other gifts, faith, hope and charity that make it possible for us
to really have wisdom, justice, temperance and courage. Without faith, hope and
charity in this life, no one can really become truly wise. All throughout human
history we see people who exercise these gifts. They may not be Christians,
deeply spiritual people, or in a state of grace and can exercise some of these
potentials here and there. But ultimately original sin means we are going to
sin seriously and mess up. We need God’s grace for those 4 great virtues to be
perfected. Faith, hope and charity are supernatural. These are things that
human beings would never know that they need or could have without God giving
them supernaturally that’s why they are called the theological virtues. We only
know about them through divine revelation and we couldn’t know about them by
reason. We can only have them through God’s grace. The theological virtues,
faith, hope and charity are the crown of the first 4 cardinal virtues that
transform and make them possible. God doesn’t want us just to be whole human
beings and restore us to what Adam & Eve were when they blew it in the
Garden. God wants us to be more than that. He wants to elevate our human nature
and divinize it. He wants us to share in His own Divine nature. Charity is all
about loving with God’s love. Loving as the 3 persons of the Holy Trinity love
each other and sharing in that goes way beyond human nature. This is an
incredible thing and call. It was only possible because God became man and we
can share in his virtue. This is what the real Catholic life is all about. It’s
not just about making it or going to heaven by the skin of your teeth after
struggling. It’s about growing in holiness and becoming like Jesus all
throughout our life, a champion not without struggles. As a matter of fact
without the struggles we can never become a champion. It is possible with
victory and excellence not with hopelessness, despair and frustration. This is
God’s desire for us which is a fantastic calling. The power to do this is given
to us. We are never alone because God is always with us. We should be so
thankful to God for all the wonderful things He allowed us to think, feel, see
and hear. Not only for the things that are visible but also the invisible. God
has given us everything that we need, the love, care and protection that a
child needs from a Father who loves us so much. The readings for today from the
1st, psalm to the gospel all speak of the importance of our senses. Sometimes
we have this tendency to overlook these things and dwell more on the less
important things. We must train our minds and hearts to know the top priority
which is everything that connects us to God at all times. All we have to do is
be aware that God reveals Himself in a very mysterious way that we have to
continuously work for a heart and mind that is focused on the Lord, remove all
distractions in our life so that He will reveal Himself to us. God is infinite
and unlimited in nature and our minds can only comprehend as far as our limited
brains allow. Let us seize every moment and opportunity in order to daily grow
in our knowledge of the Lord. Let us all come to our senses. Once we've seen,
heard, smelled, tasted, touched, felt and experienced who the Lord is in our
lives then we are really blessed in the truest sense of the word. Although we
can only come to the full understanding and knowledge of God when we die, we
can still work our way to knowing God using the best of our abilities for it is
written, if we draw near to God, He will draw near to us. Have you ever
experienced talking to someone but it seems that he/she is not paying
attention. Let us not miss a single detail about our Lord and always be
attentive to Him. If we are caught up in our own personal lives then we have a
tendency to misunderstand the messages sent our way. Let us develop an attitude
of total surrender to God and He in His goodness will make known to us things
beyond our understanding. When we're on the phone we sometimes fail to hear
what's being said to us on the other line. We can always hear this being said,
Hello are you still there? It may be due to a low signal, our lack of attention
and other things that disrupt the communication. We are reminded by God through
the gospel to remove all hindrances and be able to hear him loud and clear. It
is imperative that we heed his call and the time is now. Sometimes we end up
doing things that we are not supposed to do and we get confused and that's
because we are not attuned to our Life Coach, who is God and no one can lead us
to the right direction only Him. We need to sharpen and make our senses very
keen so that we will not miss out on anything. Some people who lack one of the
senses like for example the blind people develop a keen sense of hearing,
feeling and smelling. The blind have mastered well their other senses that they
can hear, feel and smell the slightest sound, touch and scent that can be
unnoticeable for some. We should say from
this point of view that the lack of one sense can enhance the other senses. We
can also say that there are moments in our life when we have to shut out one of
our senses, too. There are a lot of things being presented to us day in and
out. We should know that some things are better left unsaid and ignored. In
times like these we need to know exactly what we need to take in and which of
our senses do we need to pay attention to and focus on in order to see and hear
what the Lord is showing and telling us and be truly blessed. Have we noticed that
as we get anxious and worried about some things the more they get worse. It
doesn't really help to be uptight and all stressed out. We can not always
expect things to go our way and sometimes we do have to get ourselves ready for
the disappointments coming to us. We may have the best intentions and motives
but we can not always expect other people and the circumstances around us to go
along with our plans. We just have to do what we have to do. As in today's
gospel, Jesus warned His disciples what may come upon them and what to expect
so as to get them ready for what awaits them as they take on the task to spread
the word of God. At the end of the day, when we know we've done what is
required of us and did it with the best of our abilities then we should just
have to let go and let God. Doing the will of God and responding to God's call
is not an easy task. Jesus warns us that times could be rough and we can expect
difficulties to come our way. Things may not always go our way and get the
popular choice. The message of God run contrary to the world’s message and so
is the spirit of the world contrary to the spirit of God. In fact in today's
gospel Jesus sent His disciples like lambs among wolves. We have to remind
ourselves also that in Matthew 10:16 it tells us, "Behold, I am sending
you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as
doves." At the time of Jesus, we can already imagine how difficult it is
to live physically in the world they live back then but nowadays we are so
blessed to be able to exercise our faith freely without fear of losing our
lives. The wolves in our midst may not be in the form of barriers to faith like
in the time of Jesus and could very well be our very own self that has ascribed
to the world's values. Today’s martyrdom is not so much a physical death but
one of self-denial. We all have our own crosses in life and it is never easy to
take it up and follow Jesus. Although it makes all the difference knowing that
victory is already ours through the passion, death and resurrection of our
Lord. Amen. Hallelujah!
Luke 10:1-9
Jesus appointed seventy-two others whom he sent ahead of him
in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. 2 He said to them, “The
harvest is abundant but the laborers are few; so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way; behold, I am sending you
like lambs among wolves. 4 Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals; and greet
no one along the way. 5 Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to
this household.’ 6 If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest on
him; but if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay in the same house and eat and
drink what is offered to you, for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move
about from one house to another. 8 Whatever town you enter and they welcome
you, eat what is set before you, 9 cure the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God
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