9th January 2020

Jesus set His face to His Mission after His Baptism.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.” (Luke 4: 18 – 19).

In the Baptism of the Christ (Matthew 3: 16 – 17), Jesus is anointed by the Holy Spirit for a Mission:

1 Bring the Good News to the poor.

2 Proclaim liberty to captives.

3 Recovery of sight to the blind.

4 Grant freedom to the oppressed.

Our own Baptism and Mission are intertwined with the Baptism and Mission of Jesus. When we own our Baptism and accept our Mission, we blossom and become saints. In the history of mankind, the saints are the only successful people. This is why their lives are celebrated year after year. We still celebrate the memories of Peter, Paul, Jude, Stephen, Cecilia, Agatha. Catherine, etc. This is what true success means. The world has a different standard for success. The club of the saints are open every day for enrollment. The game starts with ownership of our Baptism and embracing our mission.

We can never embark on our Mission without the Holy Spirit. Therefore ask for the Holy Spirit. Ask for Him again and again.

However, the Holy Spirit will not come upon us against our will. We must accept the grace to be docile to the Spirit. This means:

1. repenting and believing in Jesus (Acts 2:38),

2. crucifying our “flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24),

3. decreasing so Jesus will increase (Jn 3:30), and

4. letting it be done to us according to God’s Word (see Lk 1:38).

The question is not: “Do we have the Holy Spirit?” but “Does the Holy Spirit have us?” Come, Holy Spirit, very soon!

6th January 2020

A CHRISTIAN CHRISTMAS

“Every spirit that acknowledges Jesus Christ come in the flesh belongs to God, while every spirit that fails to acknowledge Him does not belong to God. Such is the spirit of the antichrist which, as you have heard, is to come; in fact, it is in the world already.” —1 John 4:2-3

Most of us are Christians. That means that we do things not primarily because they are good but because they are ways of imitating Christ. For example, we heal the sick not primarily to help the sick but to imitate Christ, for He heals the sick (see Mt 4:23ff). We pray not primarily because it’s a good thing to do but because Jesus prayed, and we want to be like Him. Christians are baptized into Jesus (Rm 6:3). We are immersed in Him and are preoccupied with producing His life in our lives (Gal 2:20).

Therefore, to become one of the antichrists we don’t have to deny Christ or do bad things. Antichrists simply fail to acknowledge Christ (see 1 Jn 4:2-3) and fail to make the imitation of Christ the main meaning of their lives.

In this last week of the Christmas season, let us give Christ the birthday present of deciding to be His disciples, that is, to imitate Him so closely that we could rightly be called Christians. Give Christ the Christmas gift of making more Christians, acknowledging Him constantly by imitating Him closely.

5th January 2020

Epiphany of the Lord

“The Epiphany is the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel, Son of God and Savior of the world. The great feast of Epiphany celebrates the adoration of Jesus by the wise men (magi) from the East, together with his baptism in the Jordan and the wedding feast at Cana in Galilee. In the magi, representatives of the neighboring pagan religions, the Gospel sees the first-fruits of the nations, who welcome the good news of salvation through the Incarnation.” (CCC 528).

The three magi from the East, rich and highly educated men entered the unassuming house and saw the child with Mary and instantly recognized the humble child as Christ the Lord. How is this possible? The star is the secret. The star of Bethlehem. When God leads you, He gives you signs.

When the magi recognized the child, they came to faith. “They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their treasures and offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.”

The journey of the Magi in the Gospel reminds us of the journey made by the Queen of Sheba to David’s son, Solomon. But while the Queen of Sheba came only to marvel at the wisdom of Solomon, Jesus, the new Solomon, invites us to journey to Him, to make us “co-heirs” of His kingdom.

Will you follow the signs that lead to Christ?

Faith is critical whenever you encounter God. “This is My Body. This is My Blood.” You encounter the Risen Jesus in the Eucharist. What do you do? What will the shepherds do? What will the three magi do? Faith is seeing with the heart.

What have you seen at Christmas?
“We have seen his star in the East,
and have come with gifts to adore the Lord.” (Matthew 2: 2).

4th January 2020

STAR WARS

“It was to destroy the devil’s works that the Son of God revealed Himself.” —1 John 3:8

The purpose of God becoming man, and therefore the purpose of Christmas, is to destroy the devil’s works. That’s why the anti-Christ denies Christ come in the flesh (1 Jn 4:2-3). That’s why Herod “convulsed” in a violent reaction when he heard about the newborn King of the Jews (see Mt 2:2ff).
Herod did not overreact but understood the true meaning of Christmas much better than most people.

Christmas is God’s invasion of the devil’s privacy here on earth. Christmas is an attack on the gates of hell which cannot prevail against us (Mt 16:18). Christmas is a behind-the-lines insurgency of the kingdom of light against the kingdom of darkness (Col 1:13). Christmas is war, or more precisely, placing Christ’s enemies beneath His feet (Heb 10:13).

The Lord is enlisting troops in His Christmas army. Will you join Him? 2020 is the year of victory. Whose side are you on? Neutrality is complicity with the enemy (see Rv 3:15-16). You’re either with Jesus or you’re with Herod (Mt 12:30). It’s Christmas time on the battlefield. You must decide.

Why Catholics bow their heads at the name of Jesus

The custom is biblically inspired and was instituted by Pope Gregory X in the 13th century.

There are many bodily gestures that Catholics perform at Mass, and one of them that was widely practiced for centuries was the custom of bowing one’s head at the mention of the name of Jesus. Even though it has not been greatly emphasized during the past few decades, it is still honored by many of the lay faithful as well as some priests.

The origin of this custom is primarily inspired by the following words of St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians. “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11) Practically speaking, kneeling every time the name of Jesus is mentioned is rather difficult, and so Pope Gregory X found a solution. He wrote about it to the Dominican Order in 1274, expressing his desire that some physical gesture be done to honor Jesus’ name.

The following portion of his letter was printed in the book With God: A Book of Prayers and Reflections by Francis Xavier Lasance. “Recently, during the Council held at Lyons, we deemed it a useful commendation to exhort the faithful to enter the house of God with humility and devotion, and to conduct themselves while there in a becoming manner, so as to merit the divine favor and at the same time give edification.

We have also judged it proper to persuade the faithful to demonstrate more reverence for that Name above all names, the only Name in which we claim salvation — the Name of Jesus Christ, who has redeemed us from the bondage of sin. Consequently, in obedience to that apostolic precept, ‘In the Name of Jesus let every knee, be bent,’ we wish that at the pronouncing of that Name, chiefly at the Holy Sacrifice, every one would bow his head in token that interiorly he bends the knee of his heart.”

Pope Gregory wanted everyone to not only honor Jesus’ name, but to interiorly submit themselves to God with a simple act of love. The Dominicans took the pope’s request seriously and became the foremost promoters of the Holy Name of Jesus in the Catholic Church, preaching about the Holy Name, forming Holy Name Societies, as well as placing altars in their churches dedicated to Jesus’ Holy Name.

The custom is a simple one and is meant to reflect an interior desire to honor Jesus, the only name by which we are saved.

Mary, the Mother of God – January 1, 2020

Readings: Num 6:22–27 • Gal 4:4–7 • Ps 67:2–3, 5–6, 8 • Lk 2:16–21

“When eight days were completed for His circumcision,
He was named Jesus, the Name given Him by the angel . . .”
In the year of Our Lord 431, the bishops of the Church gave glory to God by giving honor to Mary, pronouncing her to be “the Mother of God.” In that year, the third world-wide — or ecumenical — council of the Church took place in the city of Ephesus, in modern-day Turkey.

According to tradition, Ephesus is where the Blessed Virgin Mary lived the last years of her earthly life under the care of St. John, the Beloved Disciple. So it’s very fitting that the Council of Ephesus was the setting for the Church to proclaim Mary to be “the Mother of God.”

The bishops gathered in Ephesus to contend with the heresy being taught by the archbishop of Constantinople. He was falsely teaching that the child who was born to Mary in Bethlehem was actually two separate persons: the human Jesus and the divine Christ. Mary, according to that faulty logic, would certainly be the mother of the human Jesus, but could not be called the mother of anyone who is divine.

Fortunately, that way of thinking was condemned by the Council of Ephesus. The teaching of the Church, the bishops proclaimed, is that there is only one person in Jesus Christ, and that if Mary is the mother of Jesus — Jesus Christ who is fully God and fully man — then she can be honored as the Mother of God, as we do especially on this day, the eighth day of Christmas.

Still, even if we know all this — if we know in our heads that we can call Mary the Mother of God — why should we? Why is this feast so important that we celebrate it as a holy day of obligation?
Keep in mind that whenever Holy Mother Church obliges us to do something, she’s acting like any good mother. What she does is for our sake, not hers. At the heart of this great mystery is the truth that Mary is the “Mother of God.” This truth teaches us something about Jesus, about us, and about her.
What does the title “Mother of God” say about Jesus? The mystery that the Council of Ephesus reflected on is not principally that Mary is the Mother of God, but, rather, that this baby whom we see lying in the manger is in truth God.

The Christmas hymn asks “What child is this?” and our answer is that “this, this is Christ the King!” This helpless infant is the same God who creates the stars of the heavens. This helpless infant is the same God who destroys our sins on the Cross. In Jesus, God and man are united. The infinite and the finite wed. Because of this wedding, our lives on this earth, naturally destined to last maybe seventy or eighty years, can be lived forever in Heaven.
In your imagination, picture today’s Gospel reading. You see the infant Jesus in the manger, with His mother on the ground next to Him. Saint Joseph keeps watch over them. The Holy Family had already made the perilous journey to Bethlehem. When they had arrived, they had found themselves rejected by everyone whom they asked for shelter.
Later, there were angels and shepherds and kings from the East praising the newborn child. What a strange turn of events: from rejection to adoration! It’s no wonder that as Mary rested in the hay, she pondered these things in her heart. The Holy Family experienced complete rejection and utter acceptance because of the same person.

Mary was beginning to see how the world treats people. You remain the same person throughout your life, but because of changing circumstances, others react very differently toward you.
Mary realized that this was going to be the pattern throughout her son’s life: acceptance or rejection, based merely upon the attitudes of others and the circumstances of life. She could see, even at such a young age, that if others were given the chance to witness miracles — angels singing in the sky, water turning to wine, or a blind man regaining his sight — they would very likely praise her son.

However, if following Jesus meant watching him being turned out of the synagogue in Galilee where He had grown up, or being mocked by the scribes and Pharisees for trying to teach them something new about God, or being whipped and crowned with thorns after being condemned to a traitor’s death — what would people say about her son then?
Many of us are going to make resolutions for the new year. How successful will we be? For most of us, the new year won’t be much different than the last. If we truly want to change, it will take the grace of God. The grace of God is what made Mary the “Mother of God,” and so also our Mother. Ask her intercession before her divine Son each day of this new year.

HAPPY BLESSED NEW YEAR 2020.

31st December 2019

Have you seen the Antichrist?

“Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that the antichrist was coming, so now many antichrists have appeared. Thus we know this is the last hour.” (1 John 2: 18).

Tuesday 31st December 2019, 7th Day in the Octave of Christmas is also the feast of St Sylvester 1. Elected Pope in 314 and died about 335. Sylvester served the Church at a very turbulent period in Church history. Arian heresy and the Donatist schism threatened to destroy the Church. Then Constantine appeared and offered peace. After this Pope Sylvester contributed a great deal in the expansion of the faith in the Roman Empire.

This is the last hour warned the Apostle John and he went further:
The “Antichrists have appeared.” Have you seen any? These are some of the characteristics from the Christian Scriptures:
Lawlessness
Deceit
Temporary success
Mass seduction
Adversary
Son of perdition
Opposed Christ.
(Cf 2 Thessalonians 2: 3 – 12; Matthew 24: 23 – 26).

Pope St John Paul II warned in 1976 at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia (before he became pontiff) that we are now facing the final confrontation between the Antichrist and the Church. Remember how King Henry VIII caught over 300 English Bishops napping in 1535? Only Bishop St John Fisher earned the crown of Martyrdom. Below is a prophetic teaching of the Church on the Antichrist:

“Before Christ’s second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers. The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth will unveil the “mystery of iniquity” in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.” (CCC 675).

Do not be asleep. Be vigilant and pray at all times so that you may not fall into severe temptation. Do not become an Anti-Witness.

30th December 2019

THE FIRST DETACHMENT?

“Have no love for the world, nor the things that the world affords.” —1 John 2:15

In traditional Catholic spirituality, we emphasize the virtue of detachment from the world’s prideful desires, for “the world with its seductions is passing away but the man who does God’s will endures forever” (1 Jn 2:17). Those called to the consecrated life are to be exceptional examples of the detachment from the world which all Christians should have. For example, Anna “was constantly in the temple, worshiping day and night in fasting and prayer” (Lk 2:37).

In traditional materialistic World, we tend to emphasize attachment. Many of us want to possess a lot of “stuff” to the point that we are often possessed by our possessions. We can even put our possessions ahead of Jesus and walk away from Him in our sad possessiveness (Mk 10:22).

Contrary to popular opinion — we cannot serve God and mammon, that is, the things of the world (Mt 6:24), for, “if anyone loves the world, the Father’s love has no place in him” (1 Jn 2:15).

15th December 2019

Third Sunday of Advent

Gaudete Sunday

“Rejoice in the glory God creates through us”

The liturgy of Advent takes us out into the desert to see and hear the marvelous works and words of God—the lame leaping like a stag, the dead raised, the good news preached to the poor (see Isaiah 29:18–20; 61:1–2).

The liturgy does this to give us courage, to strengthen our feeble hands and make firm our weak knees. Our hearts can easily become frightened and weighed down by the hardships we face. We can lose patience in our sufferings as we await the coming of the Lord.

In the Catholic community, we call today “Gaudete Sunday,” meaning “Rejoice Sunday.” We rejoice because the Lord’s Christmas coming is near. Our priests wear rose vestments today to express our exuberant joy. We are flushed with joy because the world’s dire circumstances are overshadowed by God’s presence. In the shadow of His wings, we shout for joy (Ps 63:8). We rejoice not in the circumstances but in the Lord of the circumstances (Phil 4:4). We rejoice because God is with us (Is 7:14; Mt 1:23).

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever” (Heb 13:8). “The blind recover their sight, cripples walk, lepers are cured, the deaf hear, dead men are raised to life, and the poor have the good news preached to them” (Mt 11:5). “Despite the increase of sin, grace has far surpassed it” (Rm 5:20). Therefore, “be patient,” my brothers and sisters, “until the coming of the Lord” (Jas 5:7). “You may for a time have to suffer the distress of many trials; but this is so that your faith, which is more precious than the passing splendor of fire-tried gold, may by its genuineness lead to praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ appears” (1 Pt 1:6-7).

14th December 2019

St John of the Cross, Mystic and Doctor of the Church. (1542 – 1591)

He was born in Fontiveros, in Spain, in about 1542. He spent some time as a Carmelite friar before, in 1568, Saint Teresa of Ávila persuaded him to pioneer the reform of the Carmelite order. This was a difficult task and a dangerous one: he suffered imprisonment and severe punishment at the hands of the Church authorities. His Carmelite brothers did not take kindly to his ideas or severe discipline. They captured him and imprisoned him in a high attic where escape was virtually impossible. Providentially, he escaped and continued his writings. He wrote many profound works of mysticism of which THE DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL remains a spiritual classic.
He died at the monastery of Ubeda in Andalusia on 14 December 1591: the monks there had initially treated him as the worst of sinners, but by the time he died they had recognised his sanctity and his funeral was the occasion of a great outburst of enthusiasm.

His works include two major mystical poems – he is considered one of the great poets of the Spanish language – and detailed commentaries on them and the spiritual truths they convey. He was canonized in 1726 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1926.

“May I never boast, except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” (Galatians 6: 14).

God endowed St John of the Cross with an outstanding dedication to self-denial and love of the Cross. May we obtain through his intercession for similar gifts.