Sunday August 24, 2008: Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

I have never been a Muslim and have no intentions of becoming one. However, I love studying Islam. Having grown up in a small town with a sizeable amount of Muslims, I came to know about the religion and some of their rituals. When I went off to college, I took classes in Islam and enjoyed every bit of them. I became very much interested in Islam and its relationship with Christianity. One of my major graduate papers was on Muslim – Christian relations. After graduate school, I have continued to research on Islam. I consider myself to be very knowledgeable about Islam and Mohammed, yet I have no personal knowledge of Islam or Mohammed. My knowledge of Islam and Mohammed is what I have read in the books and have learnt from Muslim friends and neighbors. I cannot make any faith claims based on this kind of knowledge.


The first question posed by Jesus Christ to his Apostles needed a response from the head. They needed to tell Jesus Christ what is out there about him. What they have learnt from people about him. The response to the first question is very easy. I can give that kind of response about Islam. The second question, “Who do you say that I am?” is the more challenging question and this is personal. It requires a deep faith. In the context of Islam, I cannot answer such a question. It is a question that moves us from the head to the heart. Christianity is not knowing about Jesus Christ, but, it is, knowing Jesus Christ personally. It is a heart to heart relationship with Jesus Christ. This knowledge of Jesus is life-changing. It changes not only our faith lives but it also changes our whole worldview. You no longer look at Jesus Christ as a nice guy, a good man, a humble person, even though he has these virtues, but you will look at him as truly what he is to you, a personal savior. There is a movement from the general to the particular. He is no longer a healer, but my healer; no longer a redeemer, but my redeemer; he is no longer the great provider, but my great provider. He becomes 100% personal and this influences how you look at the whole of your reality.


This personal knowledge of Jesus leads us to our personal freedom. You will find out how comfortable and relax you are in his presence. You would begin to see yourself no longer as a slave but a rightful son or daughter of God, fully adopted and with full rights and privileges and you dine with him not as a servant but as a co-heir. This enables you to freely share with him all your joys and sorrows, your happiness and pains, your successes and failures and you can freely ask him to help you with your challenges. You will find out that you are always in the “moment” with him and you can proceed into the future without any fears because you are confident that he will care for you.


Knowing Jesus Christ personally helps us to live out fully God’s will for our lives. The bible, the rituals of the church and the teachings of the church can only give us tools to know Jesus Christ. They do not replace our relationship with Jesus Christ. You need to know Jesus personally in order for you to know what he wants you to do. That is the only way you can be a good Christian. You need to discern God’s will for you daily. It will be a mistake to think that you know all that God wants you to do. You need a personal relationship with him to be able to discern his mission for you.


The gospel this week challenges us to go and build a relationship with Jesus Christ. We know Jesus by reading our bible; we know Jesus by being with his family every Sunday; we know Jesus by praying. Let us use all these tools he has given to us to establish a solid relationship with him. If you have never asked yourself before, spend some time this week and ask yourself, “Who is Jesus Christ to me?” Continue to ask him until he answers you. You will be surprised what you will hear and how that will change your life.

Sunday June 1, 2008: Deuteronomy 11:18, 26-28, 32; Rom 3:21-25, 28; Mathew 7:21-27

In today’s readings, we are presented with a choice: a choice between doing the will of God and doing our own will. At the heart of this is an expectation from God that we his people will chose to do his will rather than our own will. God expects us his own chosen people to be obedient to him. In the Gospel of today, as Jesus concludes his sermon on the mountain, he reminds all of us his followers to choose to do the will of God. At the end of day, it is not enough to profess that we are Christians, it isn’t even enough to do many good works in the name of Jesus. As St. Paul tells us in the second reading of today, we are not justified by the works we do, we are justified by our faith, doing the will of the Father.

To choose to do the will of God comes with many blessings and to choose to do our own will comes with curses. God will expect us to choose his will over us because he believes that if we look at history, it is more rational to choose his will. Throughout history, he has always been faithful to us even when we were not faithful. He has always been present to us in the most difficult circumstances when all our hopes were lost. At the moments we felt that we had hit the rock, God was there to lift us up and change our lives. In Deuteronomy 11, he reminded the people of Israel how he saved them from the hands of Pharaoh and his army. He also reminded them how he sustained them at the desert and how he conquered the Reubenites Dathan and Abiram and the ground opened and swallowed them. Beneath these stories is also the consequences of disobediences. When Pharaoh refused to obey the command of the Lord to let his people go, he was severely punished; When the Reubenites Dathan and Abiram opposed the rule of Moses, a man placed in their midst by God in Numbers 16, God punished them severely, the ground opened and swallowed them. The historical lessons of God’s goodness and faithfulness to the people of Israel should be enough to make them accept the commands of the Lord.

God doesn’t ask much from us. He only asks three things from us. In Deuteronomy 10: 12-22, he tells us what these three commands are:

1. Fear the Lord your God and follow his ways exactly. Fear here does not mean being afraid to approach him. Fear here means a deep reverence and respect for him. We must acknowledge God for who he is and give him the respect that is due to him. This is recognizing him as the author and finisher of life. If we know this, then we must follow his ways and not our own way. To follow our way is to make God our equal, is to deny him the respect and honor that he deserves and at the same time elevating ourselves to the rank of God.

2. Love and serve the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul. We have been first loved by God. He should have our first love. Our first love shouldn’t go to ourselves, not our spouse or even our children but to God. This is because he is love himself and our love is only a generous gift from God. If we love him, then we must serve him with all our hearts and souls. He deserves all that we have. This means we must put him first in our list of priorities. Sunday worship of God is not one of those things I have to do in order not to incur a mortal sin, but it is part of my being – it is a place I love God in return for all his love for me.

3. Hold fast to him. In and out of season, we must hold fast to the Lord. In the story of the people of Israel, every now and then we see some of them let go of him and beginning to make their own gods. When things became rough and challenging in the desert, they begin to complain and try to abandon God for other Gods. This is repeated again and again through the Old Testament history of the people of Israel. Letting go of God signifies our lack of trust in him. We must hold on to him when things are difficult, we must never let go. God will always be faithful to us.

If we do these things, God promises his blessings. I want to share with you four of those blessings.

Ø God will look after your land. He will take charge of your home and be the head of your household. He will make his peace reign in your home and there will be happiness in your home.

Ø He will provide rain to water our crops and for grass to grow so that our animals will feed on them and we will not lack food. The promise here is that we will not lack anything. He gives this same promise in Deuteronomy 28: 12, The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings so that you will lend to many people and not borrow from anyone. You will be at the head and not at the tail and you will always go higher and not decline.

Ø There is nothing that shall stand on your way. You will dispossess mightier and greater nations and people. You will dispossess those problems in your life that will try to crush you. You will overcome disease, financial problems, family problems, etc. In Exodus 23: 25 he tells us that our reward for obedience is that, he will bless our food and drink and he will remove all diseases from our midst and he will give us a full span of life.

Ø The last promise is the one I love the most. The Lord will spread fear and dread of us in any land were we set our foot. Even before we approach the place, God will dispossess those who wish us evil. Before you begin that new job, God is ahead of you to prepare the place for your arrival. That meeting in which some people were going to be against you, God will dispossess their attacks even before you enter into the meeting. In Deuteronomy 1: 29-30, he tells us, “have no dread or fear of them. The Lord, your God, who goes before you, will himself fight for you.”

When you obey the commands of the Lord, it means you have God on your side. What better person can you have on your side? That is the reason Jesus Christ tells us in the gospel of today that when you do the will of God, when you keep to his commandments, it is like you have built your house on a solid rock. When you keep to the commands of the Lord, you have built your life on a solid rock and as we heard in the Psalm today, God is our rock of safety. There is no need to be afraid because God will always be there to save you.

Friday May 16, 2008: 2:14-24, 26; Mark 8:34–9:1

St. James challenges us today to match up our faith with actions. We can pray for all the poor in the world, we can pray for all the sick in the world, we can pray for the hungry in the world, if we cannot match up our prayers with some action, our faith is in vain. It is understandable if we do not have, but if we have, but do not give, in vain are our prayers. Christianity is a practical religion. Jesus Christ consistently showed this when he was here on earth. He did not only feed the people with spiritual bread, he also fed their immediate physical hunger. How many times have people brought great needs to us and even though we can help them, we assured them of our prayers and did not do anything practically to help them. I do not want to underestimate the power of prayer for those in need, but Jesus Christ uses also as instruments to answer those prayers of faith.

How can you help those who are in need today?

Acts 8:5-8, 14-17; 1 Pt 3:15-18; Jn 14:15-21 (April 27, 2008 – Fifth Sunday of Easter)

In the last few weeks, Jesus Christ has been inviting us to hope. He has been calling us to have faith in him and to remain in his love. In the face of all the pains and tribulations we go through, why should we still hope? For those who have suffered for many years, the question becomes, what is the fruit of hoping all these years? Our Christian hope is not foolish hope as some of my skeptical friends think. Our hope is not a pie in the sky as Karl Marx will think. It is not an illusion or at consequentially, a delusion as Sigmund Freud will argue. The temptation is that when we hope and hope for many years and nothing seems to change, we begin to believe that our hope is delusional.

In the last few months, there is hardly a day that goes by without using the word “hope.” For a friend who has just lost a loved one, I say “hope;” to a parishioner that has just been diagnosed of cancer, I say “hope;” to a class mate who has just been laid off because their company is moving over to Taiwan, I say “hope.” It is not uncommon to hear these people ask me, “Do you really believe that things will be better?” I do believe that things will be better. Why do I believe that things will be better? That is what I want to share with you today.

St. Peter tells us in the second reading of today that we need to have an explanation ready for anyone who asks us why we hope. My skeptical friends want to know why I will continue to hope in the Lord after letting my brother and sister die in accidents. Let me tell you, after going through traumatic or difficult circumstances in your life, it sometimes become difficult to remember why we hope. My job this morning is to remind us why we Christian people hope and to give you reasons why we should hope.

We hope because God is truth. He is always faithful to his word. He does not deceive us. Again and again throughout scriptures, he blessed those who hoped in his promises. The story of Abraham in the book of Genesis, is a story of hope. Abraham hoped that the promise which the Lord has made to him would be fulfilled. Biologically, it was impossible for him to become the Father of all nations because his wife Sarah had reached old age. He mistakenly thought that, that promise was to be fulfilled through Haggai, his slave woman. God still made it known to him that, it was Sarai that would fulfill this promise. He believed and because of his hope in the promise of the Lord, St. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:6 that he was credited of all righteousness.

We hope because we are children of Abraham. Through Jesus Christ, the singular descendant of Abraham, we too are sons and daughters of Abraham. The promises and blessings of Abraham are also rightfully ours. This promise from the Lord is of good and not of evil. In Deuteronomy 28:12-13, the Lord makes a promise to us, “The Lord will open up for you his rich treasure house of the heavens, to give your land rain in due season, blessing all your undertakings, so that you will lend to many nations and borrow from none. The Lord will make you the head, not the tail, and you will always mount higher and not decline …” It may be difficult to see how this promise would be fulfilled in your life if you are going through difficult circumstances. The promise of the Lord, is his promise, how he will fulfill it is not for us to decide. I remember what Mike Huckabee use to say in the campaign trail, “I am in the business of miracles and not Math.” Our science cannot explain how God will bring to fruition these promises. Job, the righteous man must have been wondering how God will bring about a change in his life after going through those years of tribulation in his life. His friends had all given up. He was even persuaded to curse God and die, but he stayed firm in the Lord. His response is found in Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be hindered.” As we see at the end of the story of Job, his situation was turned around. Job 42:12 tells us that, “The Lord blessed the late days of Job more than his earlier ones.”

We hope because hope does not disappoint. St. Paul in Romans 5: 4-5 says that we can now boast of our afflictions. We boast of our afflictions because they produce endurance, and endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint. It is hope that brings you here every morning, it is hope that makes you go to school, it is hope that makes you go to work. If you have no hope, you can do nothing. In Ezekiel 37, we have the prophecy of the dry bones. God asked the prophet Elijah to prophecy so that these dry bones will come back to life. He says that these dry bones are the house of Israel, their hope is lost and they have been cut off. God asked Elijah to prophecy that their graves will open and they will rise from them. He will put his spirit in them and they will live. He concludes that, “I have promised and I will do it.” We have become like dry bones without life in them. We have been buried in our problems and difficulties, but God has made a promise he will keep. He will open our graves and we will have life and live.

How is he going to give us life? He says to us in the gospel of today that, I will send you the Holy Spirit, the helper, the comforter. Help is on the way. On Friday, the President told us that the treasury department will be mailing out our stimulus checks beginning this Monday. That is help on the way. It will be foolish to sit down and hope that the checks are not coming. We know they are coming. In the same way, Jesus has told us that help is on the way, the Holy Spirit is coming to help us, it will be foolish to stop hoping and believing that help is not on the way. If we do that, we are making Jesus Christ a liar.

We hope because of what God has done in Jesus Christ. He sent him to come and set us free. What greater witness there is, for us to hope? If we believe that Jesus Christ died for us, then we have no option than to hope. His death and resurrection, guarantees everyone of us a place in his father’s kingdom, where as Revelation 21: 3-7 tells us, there is no pain and suffering. We must keep our eyes on this eternal prize. As St. Paul exhorts us in 2 Corinthians 4:16, “we are not discouraged by this momentarily light affliction … we look not to what is seen but to what is unseen, for what is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Let us not give away our greatest and only weapon, hope. If all fails, the one thing we must hold unto is hope. The moment you let go of hope, your life will become meaningless. It is hope that will bring us successfully to our kingdom. I live you with the words of the prophet Jeremiah in 31:17, “There is hope for the future, says the Lord.”

Acts 2:14a, 36-41; 1 Pt 2:20b-25; Jn 10:1-10 (April 13, 2008; Fourth Sunday of Easter)

Three imageries are used in the gospel of today: Jesus the good shepherd; Jesus the gate; and we as the sheep. There is a relationship that exists between the three. The good shepherd brings his sheep from the hills after grazing to the sheepfold where he is the gate to the sheepfold. The sheepfold had stoned walls about 5 feet high and the door was about 2 feet wide. The job of the shepherd was not an easy job because he had to work seven days a week, works almost throughout the whole day and he had to protect his sheep from the wild animals such as mountain lions and wolves that were after his sheep. Another difficulty also was that he had to protect the ship from the robbers who come to steal them.

In some ways, we too are like the sheep. We are as vulnerable to the wild animals and robbers as the sheep. St. Peter tells us that “our enemy the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for who to devour.” We are exposed to the evils on the television and on the internet. Going on the internet and you see pop ups that come up with pornographic materials. On TV, there are all these shows that feed our minds with a lot of evil. There is violence in our society, many innocent people being killed by people who are themselves victims of a failed society. We are being plagued by health, financial and family problems. The family is under attack by secular forces that promote same sex marriages, abortion and contraception, pre-marital and extra-marital sex. In Matthew 9:36, Jesus Christ uses the imagery of the sheep to describe us. After performing many miracles, Jesus Christ looked at the crowd that was made up of the sick, the poor, and the disadvantaged, and he was moved with pity. His heart was moved with pity because “they were troubled and abandoned like sheep without a shepherd.” That is our reality most of the time. We are like sheep without a shepherd. It is like nothing is permanent for us. All our hopes for the future seem to be dashed. Things are changing so fast and we are helpless. All the high hopes we had when we were in college seem to be eloping. Just yesterday, everything seemed to be happy, today it is all pain and sorrow. Just a few years back our economy was booming, things seem to be alright and we were buying all these big homes, today those same homes are being foreclosed; just a few days ago, your health seemed to be alright, today, you are on heavy prescriptions. Today, you might be happy that you have a good job, next week you might be told that your company is outsourcing your job or the company is moving to China. We are helpless. The good news today is that we have a shepherd. We have a good shepherd that is ever vigilant – the one that will watch over us and keep us safe from the mountain lions, the wolves, and the robber who seek to take us away from us. What the evil one does given these circumstances is to deceive us that God has abandoned us, we should stop believing. I want to assure you today that the good shepherd is diligently watching over you, just hold firm to him. The question is not whether he will watch over you, the question is whether you will continue to hold firm to him and give him the opportunity to watch you. What our enemy the devil does is to feed you with despair, to make you think God has abandoned you. As St. Peter tells us, our best weapon is to hold on to Jesus, and we can only do that with our faith in him.

Sometimes, we all like sheep are dumb. As a little boy, I had the privilege of being with sheep in the fields grazing. One of the things you notice is that if the lead sheep stops, all the other sheep also will stop. If the first sheep enters into the pond, every one of them will as well. We like sheep just some times follow the crowd and do dumb things. I think about those women who wear high hills boots that make them very uncomfortable to walk in the snow during winter. They have to wear them because according to the fashion magazines, these are the shoes in vogue. I think about young students who will not wear their jackets on a cold winter morning to school because everyone in their click is not wearing one. Even though they might feel very cold, they will pretend they are not cold. I think about many of us who vote for a candidate in the election because Randy Rhodes on the left and Rush Limbaugh on the right have asked to vote for such a candidate. We do not live convince and convicted lives. We just follow the crowd. No matter how dumb we may be, the good news today is that, Jesus our good shepherd still accepts us because we are his own.

In Isaiah 53:6, we are told, “all we like sheep have gone astray, each person going his own way …” Like sheep, sometimes we just wander away. The sheep does not decide to wander away from the shepherd. The sheep does it gradually, unknowingly. It keeps moving away from the rest. Rarely do I find people who tell me they woke up one day and decided to leave the Church. I frequently find people who gradually started wandering away from the church, first by leaving Mass immediately after communion, and then by coming every other week, and then gradually they start coming only once a month and then once a year, and so on and so forth. The good shepherd has taken our sins upon himself. He has patient love for us and he wants to bring you back to the sheepfold.

We like sheep, listen to the voice of the shepherd. I think about that Verizon commercial, “Can you hear me now?” The good shepherd is calling you, can you hear him now? Like the sheep hears the voice of the shepherd, we too must hear the voice of Jesus calling us to himself. It is only in hearing his voice that we can have abundant life. If we do not listen to his voice, we will try really hard, get frustrated trying, yet we will not have fulfilled lives. Let us come to him and be filled with life abundantly.

John 7: 1-2, 10, 25-30 (Friday, March 7, 2008)

Jesus Christ knew the Jews were trying to kill him. He also knew that he has a mission that is greater than his death. For this reason, he went preaching publicly at the cost of his death. It takes courage to do what Jesus Christ did. He stood courageously for what he believes. He was not going to let fear stop him from carrying out his mission. In the martyrs, we have models of people who stood firm in what they believed in. They were ready and willing to offer their lives for their beliefs.

St. Paul tells us that we have not received the spirit of timidity. The Holy Spirit that we have received is a spirit of boldness, of courage to always stand firm and defend our Christian faith and values. Given the wave of anti-Catholicism in America, many people are not confident to boldly say they are Catholic. We must be proud of our Catholic identity, our Catholic heritage. I do not see any gift that I have received that is greater than the gift of my Catholic faith.
I am willing to die for my Catholic and Christian faith. Would you?

John 5: 31-37, (Thursday, March 6, 2008)

During elections, candidates are always eager to get endorsements of prominent persons; they want those persons to testify to their suitability for the office. As Christians, sometimes, we seek these kinds of endorsements. We want people to say how good Christians we are. We do many things not because they come from our inside, but because we want to show people how Christian or holy we are. In the gospel of today, Jesus Christ alludes to the endorsements he has received from John the Baptist, from Moses, from the scripture itself. He says all these endorsements are nothing to him, compared to his works in relation to his relationship with the Father. He says, “I have testimony greater than John’s. The works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify on my behalf.”

The way we live our lives in and out of the Church give testimony for us; and not what the pastor or some member of the parish council says about us. Jesus Christ tells us in the gospel of John that it is by the way we love that other people will know that we are truly his disciples. Rather than seeking the praise of men and women, let us let the fruits of our work speak for us.

What are the fruits of your Christian life?

John 4: 43-54, (Monday, March 3, 2008)

The royal official in the gospel of today is not a man who goes around looking for signs and miracles, he is a man that has a genuine faith in Jesus. He believed in Jesus’ power to heal his son. When Jesus says to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will not believe,” his response to Jesus truly shows the depth of his faith. He says, “Sir, come down, before my child dies.” He knows that Jesus Christ has the power to save the life of the child. When Jesus Christ sends him back to go and his son will leave, even though Jesus Christ did not go physically with him, he believed.

This is the kind of faith that Jesus Christ demands of us his followers. He wants us to lay everything we are going through to him. We need to bring our troubles to him with confidence, knowing that he will help us. One of the problems we always face is that even when we ask Jesus to help us, we don’t really believe that he can help us in our situation. If Jesus cannot do it, no other person would be able to. Trust fully in him.

Do you sincerely believe that Jesus Christ can lift you up from your troubles?

Genesis 12:1-4a; 2 Timothy 1:8b-10; Matthew 17:1-9 (Sunday, February 17, 2008; Second Sunday of Lent) Homily by Deacon George Showalter

When we look at our lives we become aware of many desires and needs we long to see fulfilled. These needs might include happiness security, love, good health, purpose in life, peace of mind, and many others. The list seems endless. However, the greatest need we will ever have on this earth is to know God intimately! A deep relationship with Him will affect every area of our lives and actually transform us into the persons He wants us to be. Therefore, Holy Mother Church offers to us the season of Lent. It, as Fr. Peterson told us on Ash Wednesday, is not intended to be so much a season of atonement as a season of seeking a closer unity with our maker and Lord.
In our busy world, at work, at practice, at play, each with their own stresses and pressures, it is easy to neglect God and live most of the time as if He doesn’t exist. Some Catholics even settle for a token appearance at Mass on Sundays. We desperately need to have a close relationship with Jesus, our Lord and Savior. He teaches ”I am the vine; you are the branches…apart from me you can do nothing.”
Abram, of our first reading, was human, undoubtedly with the same wants and desires as ourselves. God told Abram, who had not known of or been close to God before, “Follow my directions and I will bless you. I will make your name great. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” Abram accepted God’s offer. God was as good as his word. We know the rest of the story.
Paul in his letter to Timothy wrote: “Beloved; Bear your share of hardship for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. He saved us and called us to a holy life not according to our works but according to his own design.”
In Lent, we move persistently towards the greatest commemoration possible for any Christian.
In five weeks we will celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Is it possible for Easter Sunday to be just another of the 52 Sundays of the calendar year? Is it possible to turn one’s back of the invitation, the call, that each of us receives from God? Do we wait for Moses and Elijah? Must they appear to us?
In the Gospel proclaimed today, as God spoke from the cloud and said ”This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him,” He was not only speaking to the three who accompanied Jesus up the mountain. He was speaking to you. He was speaking to me. He was speaking to all who would hear those words proclaimed.
With that in mind, speaking of giving up things for Lent, perhaps all of us should struggle “to give up” what ever remains of an indifference we still have to the Word of God. God speaks to us. He calls to us. It was He who, as Paul writes, calls us to a holy life bestowing on us grace in Christ Jesus before time began, and then made manifest in our savior Christ Jesus, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
The greatest need we will ever have on this earth is to know God intimately! A deep relationship with Him will affect every area of our lives and actually transform us into the persons He wants us to be. It is my belief, the call Abram received is a call given to the world and each individual within it.
God said, “Follow my directions and I will bless you. I will make your name great. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.” Abram accepted God’s offer. May we be so bold to follow his lead!
God is as good as his Word.

Mark 2: 1-12 (Friday, January 18, 2008)

The paralytic expected a miracle of healing from Jesus. He wanted to be physically healed from his paralysis. After all the time and energy spent trying to get him into the building, Jesus rather says to him “Child, your sins are forgiven you.” He wasn’t expecting the forgiveness of sins, neither did he even consider the fact that Jesus has the power to forgive sins. I suspect he would have been very much disappointed if the doubts of the scribes did not lead Jesus to physically heal him. Jesus however does not see like we human beings. He knows the inmost part of our being that is even hidden from us. He knew that what this man needed the most was not physically healing, but spiritual healing. We too like the paralytic sometimes approach Jesus with what we feel we need the most without receiving an answer from Jesus. At those times, Jesus is always present working miracles in our lives – miracles he knows that we truly need. Don’t get discourage or disappointed when you do not receive an answer to a prayer. Trust that Jesus who knows your true need is present working his miracles.

Do you believe that Jesus is always working miracles in your life?

Luke 21: 20-28 (Thursday, November 29, 2007)

Jesus invites us in today’s gospel to trust in him. When things are not going smoothly; when life becomes too difficult; when you get to a point of giving up; Jesus says, hold firm in your trust. We see this trust in the life of Job in the Old Testament. When he lost everything and even the wife asked him to curse God and die, Job held firm to the Lord because he believed strongly that when he is down to nothing, God is up to something in his life. What about Daniel in the Old Testament? When he was thrown into the lions den, he trusted that his God will save him and His God saved him. In my life I know so many people who gave up. They could not trust in the Lord when they met challenging times. They felt the Lord had abandoned them. Remember, all the those difficult and challenging times have a life span, but the life with Jesus is eternal. Let us stand firm in him because he is coming with power and great glory to liberate us from our present bondage.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ give to us the faith of Abraham, the trust of Job and the courage of Daniel. Help us every day of our lives stand firm, believing that our day of redemption is almost at hand.

Luke 18: 1-8 (Saturday, November 17, 2007)

Jesus invites us in today’s gospel to never get wearied praying. It is very easy for us to give up. How often do we hear people say, “I have tried, I am giving up.” When we give up, we cut off the channel to our blessings. Prayer is our open channel to God. While sometimes we may think that God is not listening our prayers, it is not true that he isn’t listening. He listens to every petition we make. God even knows what we want to ask for before we open our lips to pray. Sometimes God wants us to persevere, to see how much you trust and love him. At other times, God feels what you ask for is not just right for you at the moment. You have to keep asking until when it is right, he will give it to you. If you cut off the channel of communication with him just because he did not give you what you ask for immediately, when the time is right for him to give you what you asked for, you will not be available to receive it. Today I encourage you to stay in pray even when nothing seems to happen. God works in that nothingness.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, give us the perseverance we need to always stay in prayer. Strengthen us in prayer that we would always be open to your gifts and blessings to us in our lives.

Luke 8: 16-18 (Monday, September 24, 2007)

One of the Catholic symbols of baptism is light. Parents and godparents are invited to receive the light of Christ - the light is entrusted to them to keep it burning, so that when the Lord comes, he will find them watching. The Christian life should be like a light that shines through all the world. Light is one of the symbols that Jesus Christ uses to identify himself. He says, "I am the light of the world." We all have been entrusted with this light of Christ, the question is, are we burning brightly? Sometimes we are ashamed of our faith; we feel timid talking about Jesus; we deny Jesus in the presence of non-Christians. My interest today is not how much we have failed to be the light of Christ, but how we can become the light of Christ? The past has happened and gone and there is not much we can do to change that than to seek the forgiveness of God for our failures. Christ is giving us one more opportunity today to rekindle our lights. The best way towards becoming Christ's light is by the way you live your life. Your life must radiate the Christian virtues of faith, hope, love and charity. When you live radically these values, people will come to know and believe in Jesus. As you strive to do these things, more graces will be given to you by Jesus to enable you become even the more successful in your Christian life.

Prayer:
Lord, you have called us to be your light shinning through all the world. Please help us to rekindle the light of your faith, hope, love and charity in us, that we may shine brightly your life to those we meet.

Luke 8: 4-15 (Saturday, September 22, 2007)

The last few words in the gospel of today are the most important for us. We want to be the seed that falls on the rich soil. How do we receive the word of God? To be the seed that falls on rich ground, we must accept the word of God with a generous and good heart. Are we open when Jesus speaks to us? Perhaps when he tells us the things we want to hear, “yes” and when he challenges us to the things we do not want to hear, we do not. We get into the whole attitude of picking and choosing what we want to hear and want we want to believe. Our faith lies in accepting willingly whatever God wants to give us to us. It is not faith if we are only open to what we want to have from God. The teaching in today’s gospel does not presume that things are going to be easy. Bearing Christian fruit is not easy. However, we must persevere. Christians do not just give up when things become difficult. Christians hold firm unto the living Christ, knowing that he would lead them through the current storms to times of greater success.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ, we trust in the plan you have for us. Use us as your will to accomplish the work of your kingdom. Send us crosses and sufferings, if these will make us become truly the people you have called us to be.

Luke 14: 25-33 (Sunday, September 9, 2007 – Twenty Third Sunday in Ordinary Time)

What is the most important priority of your life? Perhaps it is your job, your children, your spouse, or even your hobbies. Where your treasure is, that is where your heart is. Jesus in the gospel of today says, that he is our number one priority. For Christian people, Jesus Christ is our primary and most important priority. He says it clearly that we must abandon our priorities and take up our crosses and follow him.

Jesus Christ in this gospel does not underestimate the Cross. He himself is heading down to Jerusalem where he shall embrace his cross. He realizes that the Christian journey comes with a lot of crosses. If he is our priority, we must embrace the crosses. He uses the analogy of the man who wants to build a house and sits down to calculate the cost of building. We all know many people who started projects that they did not finish. It may be that degree program, or that building project. It may even be that we tried to quit smoking or drinking, but we did not complete the task. As I drive on I-68 to Washington DC every month, shortly before Cumberland Maryland, I see the Noah’s Ark that is being rebuilt by the Ark of God Church. There is a big sign, “Noah’s Ark being rebuilt here.” That uncompleted Ark has been there for many years. That uncompleted ark in Frostburg, Maryland was started in 1976 by Pastor Richard Greene. Pastor Greene believes he will complete the Ark someday and hopefully would be young enough to issue people into the Ark when the end time comes. But there is no work going on in the Ark. Timothy Beal in his book, “Roadside Religion” discusses this ark in a full chapter. He describes it as a “work in progress without progress.” They may be many reasons why the Ark is not yet completely. It could be financial reasons; lack of contractors to carry on the work; it may even be lack of commitment to the project from members of the Church. Whatever the reasons are, they are irrelevant to us. We must attack the reasons head-on. I remember that commercial, “Head-on apply directly where it hurts.”

As Christian people, they may be many reasons why we cannot continue our journey towards discipleship: it may be our children; it may be our spouse, it may be our parents; it may be our profession. The question remains, who are you primarily committed to? Jesus invites us to hate brother, sister, family, professions in order to follow him. This should not be taken literally. What Jesus is rather inviting us to, is to clear all obstacles that stand on our way from being his true disciples. Jesus Christ is not the one we called on only when we have a big disaster in the family, a terrible disease, a divorce, a child going wild, etc. He should be the central part of our family every day. He should be the number one priority. When we make him the central part of our lives, we don’t wait for him to come only when there is a disaster or problem, for he is present to prevent the disaster from happening. I hear people tell me all the day, we cannot come to Mass because our children have a football game or piano lessons; they claim they rarely have time to pray because they have to run around with their children from one activity to the next. You have to reevaluate your priorities.

Perhaps Jesus Christ is not the priority in your family. You have to cut off all those things that prevent you from carrying your daily Cross to follow Jesus. This may mean cutting down on the number of activities your children are involved in; this may mean cutting off from certain friends who all they know is negativity, infusing your life with a lot of negative attitudes; this may mean giving up a job that pays you well, yet, you are led to compromise your Christian values every day. With Christianity, you cannot play at both teams in one game. You cannot eat your cake and at the same time have it. You have to chose a side that you belong to. Here comes the distinction between being a follower of Christ and a disciple of Christ. Jesus Christ had many followers, but not many disciples. The followers were those who were there to take something off from him – perhaps healing. They followed him just because he was a super star. He was a popular man who healed so many people and performed a lot of miracles. They were not in anyway committed to him. They would be like most people who would buy a ticket to see Paris Hilton if she came to town. They are not in any way committed to her or what she does. They just want to be in the presence of a celebrity. These are just followers. The disciples are those who are committed to Jesus. They are ready to die for him and they want to live out his message radically in the world.

We the Christian people at St. Margaret Mary Church are called to be disciples and not just followers of Christ. We are invited to enter into a committed relationship with Jesus Christ. We begin our Parish School of Religion this weekend. What are your priorities? Jesus Christ must become the priority of your family. We wonder sometimes why our Children grow up not living the faith, it is because we failed to help them live the faith radically when they were growing up. How will the child learn the faith when you rather take him or her to a basketball game on Sunday morning rather than bring the child to Church for religion classes; how will the child be committed to Jesus Christ if you do not help the child to get to know Jesus when the child was growing up. You sit down at home on Sunday morning and even if you would not come to church, you refuse to bring the child to Sunday School. We are beginning a new year of the Parish School of Religion, you must look at your priorities and place Jesus Christ at the very top. Mass attendance and attendance at Sunday school is not what you squeeze in after you have put together your plan for the year. It must be something you arrange all your other plans for the year around.

This is the invitation from Jesus Christ today to you. If you truly want to be the person he has called you to be, you must accept this invitation.

Luke 5: 1-11 (Thursday, September 6, 2007)

Peter was a skilled fisherman. He knew that it wasn’t just a good night for them. They did the best they could, but they caught nothing. Jesus approaches them and makes a request that they put in their nets into the deep water. Peter knew Jesus as a teacher and not as a fisherman, but he trusted and threw in his net into the water. They caught an enormous amount of fish. Trust is very important. When Jesus invites us to do something, do we trust him enough? Given our everyday difficulties, some times we want to give up. Please don’t give up. Jesus is inviting you to go a little deeper in your faith and he will restore you. If Peter had walked away from him, he wouldn’t have received his promise. Please do not walk away from Jesus. Go a little deeper. Pope John Paul II tells us in his encyclical at the dawn of the new millennium that, the first condition for going deeper in faith is cultivating a deeper prayer life. In the last few days, Jesus has invited us to prayer. If prayer is not a priority in your life, it is time you give it much consideration. This is because, it is the way towards your restoration.

Prayer:
Lord, help us to trust like Peter and lead us deeper in faith, that we may receive and experience the blessings and promises you have given us your children.

Hebrews 12: 1-4 (Sunday, August 19, 2007)

Last Sunday, the second reading from the book of Hebrews set as a model for Christian faith, the faith of Abraham. Today we might ask, how can we have the enduring faith of Abraham? Christians have what Abraham did not have during his lifetime, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the perfecter of our faith. Our Christian life is a journey, or as the author of Hebrews will prefer to call it, “a race.” It is a race of faith in which Jesus Christ is the final line in which our victory would be declared. As with every race, there are witnesses and we need a lot of preparation so that we will not make a fool of ourselves. Today we had the privilege here in Parkersburg of a half marathon. Those who ran in the marathon have spent many weeks preparing themselves. We were there yesterday morning to watch them. We witnessed the race. Some of the spectators are those who have won the marathon before, many years ago and others are thinking about running a marathon in the future. If everyone in the marathon kept spinning around in one place, why would any of the spectators ever think of running a marathon? The same is the Christian life. Our forefathers in the faith who have gone before us are our witnesses as we try to live the Christian life. They are available to give us all the support that we need to win the race. Also, there are many spectators here on earth who are watching how we live our Christianity. The way we live it out will determine whether they would join the Church or not. As with all those that run a race, we don’t need to keep spinning in one place, they must be progress in our faith. We must keep moving forward.

How do we move forward? The letter to the Hebrews gives us the answer. By ridding ourselves of “every burden and sin that clings to us.” You cannot run a Marathon with five, six and even seven different heavy back packs on you. Even running with one heavy backpack will affect you. The sins in our lives weigh us done as we run this race of salvation. Sometimes we get into this mentality that the little sins don’t matter, it is only the big sins that matter. It is the little sins that lead to big sins. We deceive ourselves that once it is not adultery, fornication, pornography, murder, etc. it is okay. The little sins affect tremendously our Christian race. In most cases, these sins lead us to the bigger once. We need to rid ourselves of sins such as:

Ø Lying
Ø Gossiping
Ø Telling dirty jokes
Ø Using God’s name in vain (e.g. saying, “Jesus Christ” when we are mad with someone.)
Ø Cheating on your time sheet at work
Ø Taking things from work home
Ø Taking sick days when you are not sick
Ø Holding grudges against fellow employees and relatives
Ø Being impatient with your spouse, children or parents
Ø Not helping with house chores
Ø Not cleaning up behind ourselves
Ø Irritating and aggravating your parents (e.g. not taking no for an answer.)
Ø Spending too much time on the cell phone or computer.
Ø Fighting with your sisters and brothers
Ø Not playing with your younger siblings
Ø Disobedience.

We need to get rid of all these things, if we truly want to be the people that God has called us to be. For some of us these things have become so much of our lives that we do not even consider them sins again. There is a saying that when evil persist in a community for more than six months, it becomes a way of life and is acceptable. For us Christians, it is not just acceptable to live in this way. We must begin to rid ourselves immediately of all these sins. God’s plan for us is not to tell lies, gossip, be disobedient, be impatient with other people. His plan is that we be Christ-like and at the end enjoy eternal bliss with him in heaven. The best place for us to begin to work on ourselves towards getting rid of these sins is the confessional. We don’t wait to confess only the so called “big sins” in confession. We need to use frequently this sacrament so that we get the sacramental grace needed to combat small creepy sins that may cause us not to win the race.

We also need to evaluate ourselves constantly to see if we are spinning in one place or we are moving forward. I will strongly recommend what is called a spiritual daily order. At the beginning of the month, you list all your weaknesses that you need to work on for the month. At the end of each day, look through them and every one you did well, mark a plus sign and every one you did not do well, mark a minus sign. At the end of the month, bring it with you to the confessional and show it to your confessor. In this way, you can evaluate yourself with the help of the priest how you are doing. Remember, you cannot do this all on your own. You need the help of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the great intercessor to help you. Ask her for the graces you need to continue running the race successfully.

Hebrews 11: 1-2, 8-19 (Sunday, August 12, 2007)

This reading from the book of Hebrews is in my opinion an excellent teaching on the meaning of Christian faith. The writer says that “faith is the realization of the things hoped for.” This means we are certain of the things that we hope for. As Christians, we hope for eternal life – this is not empty hope or what Sigmund Freud would call “the future of an illusion.” We are absolutely sure that there is eternal life. We are so sure of this because Jesus Christ, who is the singular descendant of Abraham taught us so and not only that he taught us to believe in eternal life, through the event of the Cross and his subsequent resurrection and ascension, he assured us of his power over death and guaranteed us everlasting life with him in heaven.

When God makes his promises to us, we must always take them serious because God does not make empty promises – He doesn’t make promises that he cannot keep. Our acceptance of God’s promises even when we do not know the outcome is what is meant by faith. The people of Israel suffered in the wilderness for forty years because they lacked faith in God. When in the book of Numbers, God commanded Moses to Choose one man from every tribe to go survey the land of Canaan, (the land of promise) he is giving to them, the people doubted the power of God to give them that land. They went and surveyed the land for forty days came back with the confirmation that it was truly flowing with milk and honey. However, they started doubting the possibility of getting this land. They started spreading the rumor that in the land, they saw the Jebusites, the Hittites, the Amorites, and even the Anakims (who were giants.) Not only that, they described themselves as grasshoppers. Due to their lack of faith, God told them that they will receive what they wished for themselves. As grasshoppers their bodies would be buried in the wilderness.

Our lack of faith can turn our blessing to a curse. This is what happened to the people of Israel. The blessing of a land flowing with milk and honey was turned to a curse of forty years in the wilderness suffering. This is the path that was not taken by our father in the faith, Abraham. In his story as portrayed by the book of Hebrews, we learn three significant things about faith:

Ø Faith is a leap into the unknown. When God directed Abraham to leave and God to a land he was going to give to him, Abraham did not know where this land is; he did not know the conditions he will face there; he did not question the Lord. He trusted in him and he proceeded to the unknown. Sometimes God confronts us with such difficult challenges. How do we respond to him? Faith requires that we drop our own plans for our lives and let God lead us. Sometimes we work out our own template of our lives and then we want God to conform to our own template. Faith means working according to God’s template for our lives. It means letting God take charge of our lives; it means becoming a blank check in his hands so that he will write any amount he wants on it and cash it whenever he wants. This is a very difficult thing to do, yet it is just what Christians are called to do. How wonderful it is to be in a situation where you do not want to worry about anything because God is in control. That is how life would be if you surrender to God in faith.

Ø Faith means trusting that God will make the impossible things possible. In our day to day language, we do not hesitate to use sentences such as “it can never happen.” I want to assure you today that, that sentence is not in any of God’s books or scripts. Christians should never use such languages. With God, “all things are possible.” That situation you were just thinking today that is irreversible, God can reverse it within a twinkle of an eye. The scripture abounds with great miracles where things that human beings thought were impossible became possible. The whole event of the resurrection is what would seem like impossibility to human beings. Yet, Jesus did it. He even brought his friend Lazarus back to life. Don’t give up yet and Christians should never give up. We need to always hold firm to Christ because he may change that situation in the split second. Abraham and Sarah having a child at that point of their life was an impossibility to human beings but they trusted in the Lord and it came to pass. Put your faith in God and not in the human person.

Ø Faith demands that we are ready to make sacrifices when God wants us to. We must be open to sacrifice our most precious treasures. Isaac was the precious child of promise. When God demanded of Isaac from Abraham, he trusted in the Lord and he offered Isaac for sacrifice. You may have been saving money all through your life to buy yourself, your dream car at retirement. You just went to a dealership and negotiated for a 2008 Mercedez. You will return the next day with a Cashiers check from your bank. On your way home, you hear a story on West Virginian Public radio of children dying of hunger and disease in Darfur. You could hear God speaking to you to give away that money to save lives in Darfur. What are you going to do? Will you say Lord, I have saved all through my life to buy this car, I cant give this money out; or would you say, Lord, this is your gift to me, you will bless me more, I will give out this money. This was a similar situation Abraham found himself in. In his own case, it was even a human life. When God calls us to make sacrifices to him, we must make them because that is the seed of more blessings in our lives.

We are called today to have the faith, like the faith of Abraham. He is our Father in the faith and we all who believe in Christ are his descendants. If we have the kind of faith he has, we too would share in the blessings that have been extended to Abraham.

Matthew 13: 24-30 (Saturday, July 28, 2007)

We are all created good. God created us in his own image and likeness. God’s image and likeness is perfect. The Psalmist says we are created a little less than the angels; and the author of Genesis says, God saw all that he made was good. Our evil or failure to be good is not God’s fault but our own freewill to choose evil over the good. Even when the human person chose evil over the good, God still wished salvation for all of us and he sent Jesus Christ to come and die on the Cross that we might be save.

On the other hand, the devil has been sleepless ever since he was defeated and thrown out of heaven. He has constantly sought to lead God’s people astray. St. Peter tell us that our enemy the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for who to devour. He is the one that sows the seeds of sin in our hearts. Jesus constantly gives us the opportunity to repent; to turn to him. The parable of today clearly tells us that the day of reckoning is coming, when we shall give account of how we lived our lives. On whose side are we? The reward of those who are on the side of Jesus is eternal life in heaven; and the reward for those who picked the side of Satan is the eternal fire of hell.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ we acknowledge that we were created out of love and you offered your life for us because you love us. We go through life facing many temptations from the evil one the devil. We promise to follow you, yet we constantly fall again and again in sin. Do not condemn us in your justice O Lord, but through your loving mercy, give us the strength to continue to be faithful to you, so that on the last day, we will re-unite with you, together with the Blessed Virgin Mary, all the angels and saints in our eternal home in heaven.

Matthew 13: 18-23 (Friday, July 27, 2007)

If you have ever been in one of those mega revivals where there are great emotional preachers, you will understand clearly what Jesus is saying in this parable. One thing characteristic of those events is an “altar call” where people are invited to receive Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. After a very passionate message from the preacher, many people come forward and acknowledge the acceptance of Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior. This people who come forward with very good intentions and believe that they have a conversion experience, most often find themselves backsliding few days later. William James in his classic, “The Varieties of Religious experience” chronicles these experiences of conversion. This experience of conversion in a revival reflects the three characteristics of those who receive the Word of God in Jesus’ parable of the sower:

· The seed that falls on the path
· The seed sown on rocky grounds
· The seed sown among thorns

One thing common among these three is that the seed does not have firm roots. The soul that just received conversion at the revival needs to let the Word of God truly take root in his or heart, lest, the person backslides. Conversion is not a one time experience but it is an ongoing experience. It is important that we do not underestimate the power of the devil. We have to constantly reflecting and living the Word of God in our lives. It is in this way that it will truly bear fruit. The only way we can access how rooted the Word of God is in your life is by your actions, the fruits of God’s Word.

Prayer:
Lord Jesus Christ we come before you asking that you give us a deeper understanding of your Word. Help us in our daily lives to live out this Word in ways that other people will come to know that you are truly the Lord and Savior. When temptations come, give us the graces we need to withstand them, so that we will continue to be faithful to you all the days of our lives.