NO MORE DOUBT

There is really a need to be watchful and alert in guarding our faith and defending ourselves from the evil snares of the devil so that we can put up with it when it attacks. It is important that we take seriously this advice from Ephesians 6:11-20

"Finally, draw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power. Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil.

For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens. 

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. 

So stand fast with your loins girded in truth, clothed with righteousness as a breastplate,

and your feet shod in readiness for the gospel of peace. 

In all circumstances, 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, which is the word of God.

With all prayer and supplication, pray at every opportunity in the Spirit. To that end, be watchful with all perseverance and supplication for all the holy ones…Amen. Hallelujah!

2 Corinthians 11:1-11

...But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts may be corrupted from a sincere [and pure] commitment to Christ. 4 For if someone comes and preaches another Jesus than the one we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it well enough...

An anchor is a great image for faith because it doesn’t move about, held down fast and makes firm our position. Hope with faith does not simply mean a subjective feeling of hope that depends on our own personal feelings. What are the things that we hope for? Our hope should be something objective. We should hope for what God has promised. It should be our hope that we’ll go to heaven. This is the hope that we should have in our mind, our motivation to keep and stir up our faith. It is an extremely important goal for us. We do not simply have hope in seeking for the pleasures of this world. This pleasure is tangible and something that we can get a hold of immediately. The idea of postponing the pleasure, like not resorting to drugs, pre marital sex, alcohol and not depend on what seems to be the sole pleasure in life like possessions and all sorts of material things and focus on a hope in the future. We postpone the pleasures in this life and have the hope that there is a pleasure that surpasses these pleasures of this world. We have to develop virtue or the strength on the inside. The word virtue means strength. Our interior strength comes from the fact that we lose heaven if we seek those pleasures and make them the goal in our lives. It is such a pity if it will be where the anchor of our hope lies. Our hope in the promises of God may seem to be veiled at the moment. We have to reach beyond the veil just like the veil in front of the holy tabernacle or the Holy of Holies. Essentially, it was shielding a holy God from sinful man. Whoever entered into the Holy of Holies was entering the very presence of God. In fact, anyone except the high priest who entered the Holy of Holies would die. Even the high priest, God’s chosen mediator with His people, could only pass through the veil and enter this sacred dwelling once a year, on a prescribed day called the Day of Atonement. The picture of the veil was that of a barrier between man and God, showing man that the holiness of God could not be trifled with. God’s eyes are too pure to look on evil and He can tolerate no sin (Habakkuk 1:13). The veil was a barrier to make sure that man could not carelessly and irreverently enter into God’s awesome presence. Even as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, he had to make some meticulous preparations: He had to wash himself, put on special clothing, bring burning incense to let the smoke cover his eyes from a direct view of God, and bring blood with him to make atonement for sins.

“But only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance.” (Hebrews 9:7)

So the presence of God remained shielded from man behind a thick curtain during the history of Israel. However, Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross changed that. When He died, the curtain in the Jerusalem temple was torn in half, from the top to the bottom. Only God could have carried out such an incredible feat because the veil was too high for human hands to have reached it, and too thick to have torn it. Jesus a forerunner, high priest through His death and resurrection entered heaven. Thus we too are given this free access to enter heaven. If we know that we are standing on a firm and steady ground then we are confident that we are safe and secure. There is no doubt that the will of God will never take us where the grace of God will not protect us and will surely see us through for He is a truly reliable God. We have a God whom we can surely rely on. We've got to focus more on the bright and good side of life at all times because we have a great God who always works wonders in our lives. We can always rely on God at all times and be assured that the wisest thing that we can do for ourselves is to follow His precepts which are all truth and equity. There is nothing more we ought to do but live by it. In this movie about Moses it struck me how many times he kept on reminding the people of God's covenant. Every time God shows His signs, wonders and miracles the people are filled with faith but it doesn't last for each time they easily forget and not remember. Let us always remind ourselves of these signs, wonders and miracles that happened a long time ago even up to the present time for it remains true forever and ever. We have been declared through Jesus as God's own for He has made a covenant with us, the work of His hands. Let us not set this aside or neglect and put ourselves in our rightful place as His people.  God is always true and faithful to his covenant. We can count on Him to carry out and fulfill His part. It is our part of the covenant that we need to be concerned about. We've got to respond to God and fulfill our part of the bargain for our own good. This we need to be aware of and keep in mind always. Amen. Hallelujah!

P S A L M

Psalm 111:1b-2. 3-4. 7-8

R: Your works, O Lord, are justice and truth.

1 I will give thanks to the LORD with all my heart in the company and assembly of the just. 2 Great are the works of the LORD, exquisite in all their delights. (R) Majesty and glory are his work, and his justice endures forever. He has won renown for his wondrous deeds; gracious and merciful is the LORD. (R) 7 The works of his hands are faithful and just; sure are all his precepts, 8 reliable forever and ever, wrought in truth and equity. (R)

We should pray the "Our Father" and look at it in so many different aspects. We have prayed it so often that it's very easy for us to forget the power of this prayer and what they mean. We should pray it like we have never prayed it before and take time to really think about what the words mean. What a wonderful thing it is that Jesus, Himself taught us how to pray. He told and allowed us to call His Father, our Father. Who does that make us? What a great privilege and honor to become children of God and call Him Father. It is so important that we take the time to think about this prayer and let the words that we say all the time come alive in all different aspects. He said when we pray say, "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven" If only we will do the will of God instead of our own twisted wills then even if we are not yet in paradise it will become very much like heaven. Again he said, "Give us today our daily bread;" Whenever we say this we tend to think only of the material needs but St. Thomas Aquinas said that the spiritual should have a predominance over the material. We've got to have a love for the spiritual things more than the material things. God wants us to ask for the material things but He wants us even more to ask for spiritual things. A temporal thing could have something to do with a job, food, fulfillment of our ambitions and all sorts of things along with many others. Spiritual blessings would be the grace of true, deep, loving and humble acts like faithfulness in marriage and to rear the children. When Jesus said whatever you ask in my name, God the Father would grant it, He didn't mean for us to ask something out of vain glory.  To ask in His name means that it has something to do with His purpose of coming here on earth. It has something to do with eternal salvation and to grow in His grace. Whenever we ask for something material we should add in our prayer that it would be God's will but when we ask for something spiritual then we already know that it is God's will.  Today's gospel and all the readings are telling us that God’s word will always achieve its end.  Pope Benedict XVI said that Jesus is the definitive and perfect Word made flesh who dwelt among us. The Word exists before creation, the 2nd person of the Trinity and everything that exists is willed by God. The very basis of reality is pulled together because of Him. If we build our lives on this Word we build our lives on rock. We’re made through and in Him. The fulfillment of creation and this fullness we are to have finds its true meaning in Him since we come from God. Verbum Domini, the Word of God precedes and exceeds sacred scriptures. We find that necessary truth in the sacred scriptures. It renews the Church and gives life. The Word is the constant source of renewal. When we encounter Jesus Christ we are renewed. We become His disciples and He gives us His teachings. He speaks to us and gives us eternal life. In the gospel we read that the disciples approached Jesus and asked how to pray. Catholics are often accused of babbling on like the pagans because of memorized prayers. We see that today Jesus teaches us the Our Father prayer. The misunderstanding with memorized prayers came from the practices of pagans at the time of Jesus who babble on while thinking that they can manipulate their gods if they do such a thing. Our Catholic prayers are not a form of manipulation. When we pray we also seek to listen and we don’t try to control God in some way. A good suggestion of the Holy Father is the prayerful reading of the scriptures. We have to spend time in the scriptures and prayerfully read. It is good to study but we must not neglect to go to the scriptures in prayers. This is fundamental in spiritual life. The Word of God is at the basis of all spirituality of a Christian life. We need to pray and meditate on the scriptures. Apply the scriptures in our life with perseverance and doing it while believing in and pleasing God. We ask God in prayer what it means and listen to God. As in Matthew 7, Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find and knock it will open unto you. We need to ask from God for the meaning of the scriptures through the Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict XVI gives a method for prayerful reading in the following. 1. Reading of the text and find what’s the literal meaning which leads to a desire to its content, 2. Meditation, know what the biblical text says to us and must ask ourselves and know what it says to us. 3. What do we say to God? Offer Him prayers, adoration and speak to Him. 4. Contemplation, is a gift of God. It is His own way of seeing things which leads us to conversion. We need to know where we need to change. This is the concrete reality of our life, to conform our lives to the word of God. Sometimes we are more infected by the worldliness than we are by the Word of God. God gives in His Word the gift of renewal that creates within us a truly wise and discerning reality which leads to forming the mind of Christ that brings about a conversion. God wants to join us in this journey of conversion and penance. When we take the scriptures in faith it's like we walk once more with God in the Garden of Eden like in Genesis when Adam & Eve walked with God in the garden and received the fullness of life. This is what He wants to give us now that Jesus Himself obtained for us. I love this quotation that I got from an email, "When God takes something from your grasp, He's not punishing you, but merely opening your hands to receive something better." We should always have the confidence of what today's gospel is telling us and have no more reasons to doubt. There is an unexplainable joy in knowing that Almighty God is not unreachable for He is always with us. All we have to do is just pray wisely. It is in knowing the words of God that we can always stand firm, confident and unafraid in His promises in the midst of the chaos of this world. Amen. Hallelujah!

Matthew 6:7-15

7 Jesus said to his disciples: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them. Your Father knows what youneed before you ask him. 9 “This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, 10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven. 11 Give us today our daily bread; 12 and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; 13 and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil.’ 14 “If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.”