Jeremiah 31:31-34
...But this is the covenant that I will make with the house
of Israel
after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them and write it
upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer
will they have need to teach their friends and relatives how to know the LORD.
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive
their evildoing and remember their sin no more...
Organizing
all my daily reflections since 2007 made it easier for me to locate and
retrieve them. I have found it very rewarding and beneficial. It has given me
the opportunity to access with ease, the insights and reflections I wrote in
the past. Thus paving the way to recall, reflect, and share it again. In light
of the readings today I am reminded of Fr. Alex Amayin, the associate priest in
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton. His talk was about reconciliation which is very much
in line with the 1st & psalm readings for today. It was centered on 4
things which is 1. SIN 2. GRACE 3. FORGIVENESS 4. RECONCILIATION. He said that
the 1st 3 are all a reality but #4 is only a possibility. There is no doubt
that SIN happens but the GRACE of God is always present and available for us
even before we ask for FORGIVENESS. When we ask FORGIVENESS, God is always
ready to give it. RECONCILIATION calls us to true conversion. We should
always find our way back to God and never doubt His mercy. He cited the example
of a snake and caterpillar since both of them undergoes conversion. The snake
sheds off its old skin but comes out the same while the caterpillar emerges
into a butterfly. We can either choose to be the snake or the caterpillar. Take
your pick. It is important that we always maintain a clean heart and a
steadfast spirit so that we are constantly in God's presence. It's not that God
loves us any less, no matter what we do, He will always love us. It's just that
a Holy and Loving God can not dwell in an impure heart and spirit. The sacred
heart of Jesus should be our model and guide as we strive to live out the call
to be a genuine follower of God. “When we open our heart to the love of God and
to others, it makes us capable of shaping history according to God’s
plan.” - said Pope John Paul II. In His fourth apparition to St. Margaret
Mary, our Lord revealed His Sacred Heart, declaring: "Behold this Heart
which has so loved men that it spared nothing, even going so far as to exhaust
and consume Itself, to prove to them Its love.” The center of devotion to the
Sacred Heart of Jesus is the Enthronement of the image of the Sacred Heart in
the home. By the Enthronement of the Sacred Heart, we link the tabernacle of
our parish church to our home, inviting our Lord to be our constant and most
intimate companion. The Enthronement is a way of life. It means that
Christ is King of our hearts, and we desire Him to be present with us always.
In other words, by the Enthronement we signify our desire to make our hearts
and our homes holy, to sanctify our lives in every aspect. God will not refuse
nor turn His back on us if we are truly sorry for our sins and are willing to
mend our ways. Let us not be so naive into thinking that we can get away with
anything and cheat God. Let us be fair and truly square in dealing with things
that concern not just our future but our eternal destiny. Whether it's heaven
or hell, we would have to decide for that not God. If we choose to do evil then
we are surely headed where it's bound but if we remain faithful to God and all
that He represents then we are headed to a place prepared for us by God in
heaven. We are sure to go where our hearts lead us. The problem is that there
is a great propaganda out there. It makes sin appear with all its fun,
excitement and glamour. It makes virtue appear boring, lame, bland and
unexciting. But the truth of the matter is, it’s not. The pleasures that God
created in this world are enjoyed the most by those who don’t abuse them and
use it simply. Who do we think enjoys food most? The person who doesn’t know
how to fast and engorges all the time or a person after a fast experiences a feast?
The virtuous person enjoys life the most. The person who uses creation and all
things according to God’s plan enjoys it the most. It is because pleasure is
God’s idea. All the good things in the world that people want are God’s idea.
Satan can’t invent even one bit of pleasure. But God commands them to be
used so that it leads to life and a part of life is joy. The way to enjoy life
is to follow God’s commands. Life is not all about rules and regulations. God
did not just give us a bunch of rules and regulations that we are supposed to
obey like machines. What we do does not just proceed from who we are but also
makes us who we are. The actions we engage, the words that we say and the
things that we do have an impact on us. We are making ourselves all the time.
God created us when we came out of the womb, our mothers and father have a
great role in that but our creation continues every single day of our lives.
We’re even becoming someone more beautiful, mature and stronger or someone
weaker and more despicable. There’s no middle ground. We’re going one way or
another. Life leads either to heaven or to hell. That’s what the acts that we
commit do. Let us always ask God's mercy for our sins and repent of it. The
Lord said that He is not sent for the well but for the sick. We have a disease
in our souls that if left uncared for can cause death. We all have a terminal
disease called sin, we need a doctor to give us advice. We have been saved by
God but we can lose it just as we can lose our human life for not caring for
it. We go to God who is our Divine Physician to be healed. He alone can make us
whole. God's presence in our lives is inevitable just like the coming of dawn
before the break of day and if we have mastered the art of loving back God then
we become a pleasing sacrifice before Him. And in his good pleasure makes us
prosper, then we find ourselves rebuilding the walls of our boundaries as we
expand our borders. It is of prime importance that we take extra care in
attending not only to our temporal needs but our spiritual as well. We have
this mindset that it pleases God whenever He sees us going through hardships
and difficulties in life. We tend to equate God to an oppressing tyrant that
would pin us down for every wrong move. Or worst to a slave driver that would
not be satisfied unless his subjects exhaust all their strength to his service.
The people during the time in the Old Testament could borrow a good excuse for
having this kind of mindset because Jesus has not come yet. We who live in this
time of the New Testament do not have a good alibi because God already
demonstrated the greatest expression of His love for mankind when He sacrificed
His only begotten son, Jesus, to suffer and die for our sake. With this truth
always engraved in our hearts and minds we could no longer harbor wrong
impressions and mindsets of our God. Whenever a particular human right is being
violated certain activist groups passionately rally to defend such right that
is in question. What about the right of God? We are so concerned about our own
personal agenda and we fail to realize that we need to address it more than
anything else. According to Pope Benedict XVI, Jus Divinum is the right of God
which constitutes the proper and correct response of God’s creatures such as
man to his Creator. This we ought to realize and take action. We should do all
the good that we are supposed to do to a God who created us. There is something more to what we
see, hear and feel about people. We really couldn't judge a book by its cover.
It's in knowing what is hidden in the heart that we can truly say for sure what
is real. But who can see through our hearts? Nobody but God alone. What is
unknown and hidden from us, God knows. We may be able to hide from men but
never from God. We can only pray to God to create in us a clean heart. For
where our treasure is, there also will be our hearts. This should all be our
prayer, “Change me Oh God, mold me in accordance to your pattern and plan and
not mine” Dirt stain in clothes sometimes doesn't want to come off even after
several times it has been machine washed. There are really some dirt and stain
that do not go away that easily with regular washing. There is a need to scrub
it manually with soap and water so that it will come out clean. Our souls are
just like clothes which are stainable by our sins. It is a consolation to know
that our sins are washable in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. We can always
come to Him and acknowledge our sins with a sincere and repentant heart so He
can cleanse us, wipe out our offenses and blot out all our guilt. There is
nothing that could separate us from the love of God. Let us not be deceived nor
dissuaded to believe otherwise. Just like clothes that need to be washed after
being worn and got dirty so our souls need to be cleansed too by the blood of
the Lamb. God’s love ever present in the body and blood of Christ is always
present and available for us. All we need to do is reach out for it because God
is a gentleman and would never force Himself on us. There has always been a
raging battle between God and satan. Though it has already been won, satan just
won’t give up. He continues to wreak havoc and evil among us in his desperation
to bring misery into our lives and share in his condemnation. He doesn’t have
the tiniest power over us and he can only have it if and only if we give in to
his lies, deceptions and false promises. We need to make this conscious
decision each and every single day for the Lord. We need to purge ourselves of
the impurities of our souls we have to go through a certain process that will
render us with a clean heart. As we strive to nurture a heart that beats for
God alone we also go through a process of cleansing as stated in the psalm
today. God's mercy is greater than any of our sins. If we are to repent and
turn away from our sins then we've got to do it right now and really do it
fast. God sees through our hearts, our motives and intentions. What God wants
of us is to truly acknowledge His great mercy and goodness to us that in doing
so will abound a natural inclination to repent and repair all our iniquities
and lead to a brand new, wholesome and clean Christian in the truest sense of
the word. We need to stand in all humility before God and confess our sins. The
body and soul are good but it demands a need for physical asceticism. We have
to submit our bodies to an act of sacrifice without neglecting that conversion
is first of all interior. Total conversion demands not only expression in works
of penance but also of the heart. God is able to do anything. All the more
should we be full of confidence that He can create a clean heart and steadfast
spirit for us if we truly ask for it. God our Father will never turn His back
on us. Let us get this straight, it is the sin that God hates and not the
sinner. If we are in sin then that's the time we drive away God's Holy Spirit
dwelling in us for it is impossible for God's presence to exist with sin. It's
our call then to respond to the psalm's invitation to rise and go to God or
remain slumped in the mud of sin. Our God will always be the best Father a
child could ever have, the best Brother/Friend and the best Comforter and Guide
all in one. Bottom line, to Him alone shall we go because we don't know that
much and if we don’t then we end up doing one of these things, take for
granted, ignore, forget or neglect the things God is telling us to do. What's
worse it could be all of the above! We get blinded and become preoccupied with
a lot of things that lure us away from doing what God wants us to do. We are
deceived into believing all the lies of this world disguised and packaged by
the enemy in an inviting and convincing truth. We should realize that it is
always for our own good that He commands us to do the right thing. It is not
merely to impose but for us to freely decide for a life lived to the full.
There is no other way to maintain the Holy Spirit dwelling in us but to let it
reside in a clean heart. We drive away God's Spirit in us if we don't
strive to let our hearts remain clean. Today's psalm is a song that I have come
to know and sing by heart without the aid of a song book. I always love to sing
it and hear it being sung most especially by the choir during mass. It is well
for us to not just love to sing it with our voices but with the sincerity of
our hearts. The words "take not your Holy Spirit from me" made me
realize that God has the power to give and take. The thought of the Holy Spirit
being taken away from us is the worst thing that could ever happen. If we don't
feel God's presence in our life anymore and we've become numb and insensitive
to the promptings and guidance of the Holy Spirit then now is the time to
reconnect and realign ourselves to God's Spirit most especially during this
Lenten season. It is important that we always maintain a clean heart and a
steadfast spirit so that we are constantly in the God's presence. It's not that
God loves us any less, no matter what we do He will always love us. It's just
that a Holy and Loving God can not dwell in an impure heart and spirit.
It is of prime importance that we take extra care in attending not only to our
temporal needs but our spiritual as well. Amen. Hallelujah!
Psalm 51:12-13, 14-15, 18-19
R: Create a clean heart in me, O God.
10 [12] A clean heart create for me, O God, and a steadfast
spirit renew within me. 11 [13] Cast me not out from your presence, and your
Holy Spirit take not from me.
...I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall
return to you... My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit; a heart contrite
and humbled, O God, you will not spurn. (R)
Aren't
we glad that today's gospel assures us that we have a Church built by Jesus
Christ and nothing can prevail against it? We can actually learn a lot
from Sts. Peter and Paul and their example. Both were very committed to our
Lord. They were willing to leave everything behind and follow Him. They both
lived out the cross of Jesus. We see the recognition of St. Peter in today's
gospel which shows that he is very committed to our Lord and followed Him. Peter's
proclamation of the truth made him a solid foundation of the Church that not
even the gates of hell shall prevail against it. As members of the Church that
is founded on solid rock may we become like Peter always ready and confident in
announcing the truth about God. Although there is a series of problems despite
this commitment, Peter was the one who told Jesus not to talk about His dying
and being crucified in Jerusalem
and got told, "Satan, get behind me." He was also the one in the
Garden of Gethsemane after a series of important events like the
transfiguration with James and John and the raising of Jairus' daughter, cut
off the ear of the high priest servant with such impetuosity but also the one
who denied Christ 3x. St. Paul was also a man who made a serious
commitment to Christ. He has a Roman citizenship and came from the tribe of
Benjamin. He came from an affluent family that he was educated under the
supervision of this prominent teacher, Gamaliel. St Paul mentioned in the scriptures that he
was a persecutor of the Church but was converted to Christ. With true humility
he recognized how bad he really was and doesn't deserve the favors that Christ
has given him. He was willing to talk about his failures. We look at Peter and
Paul who both gave a testimony of their blood for the gospel. They preferred to
be executed and tormented rather than change their testimony. In doing this
they both highlight something else especially St. Peter. This is the kind of
man that is chosen. He is very much the man like each one of us. We can also
make the best choice that is presented to us. We must recognize that our lives
have to be a life of dying to ourselves. This is something that we could learn
from and be the Lord's instrument for the redemption of our world. Praise and
thank God for sending not only angels but also saints to the rescue. Funny, how
we sometimes find ourselves saying one thing this minute and then another thing
the next. Just like Peter in today's gospel, we witnessed the sudden shift when
in the first part of the gospel, Jesus was commending him for having professed
a truth that can not be revealed through flesh and blood but through our
Heavenly Father. But in the latter part, Jesus rebuked him for behaving
otherwise. This tells us that no matter how totally unreliable we are, at
times. God does not give up on us. He continues to shower us with grace and
mercy and it is all up to us if we will respond with faith and humility the way
Peter did who persevered despite of all the struggles until the last hour.
Amen. Hallelujah!
Matthew 16:13-23
...He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon
Peter said in reply, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” 17 Jesus
said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood
has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father. 18 And so I say to you,
you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the
netherworld shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys to the
kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and
whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” 20 Then he strictly
ordered his disciples to tell no one that he was the Messiah. 21 From that time
on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders,
the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be
raised. 22 Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “God forbid,
Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” 23 He turned and said to Peter,
“Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God
does, but as human beings do.”
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