Seems like I haven't updated this for like ages. Just saw something that I thought was really good so I decided that I'll post it here.
It is not about just saying I believe but knowing why you believe what you believe in because that can make a whole world of difference.
Check out this video clip on Fox News. Father Jonathan speaks about the decline in the number of people who are willing to identify themselves as Christians.
I really what he said somewhere in the middle of the clip:
"People deserve respect because they are people. Always and everywhere. Absolute respect in the way I speak to somebody, the way I treat somebody, the way I argue with someone or discuss. But ideas on the other hand, and behaviour, have to earn respect."
They that hope in the Lord will renew their strength, they will soar as with eagles’ wings; They will run and not grow weary, walk and not grow faint.
During my term in St Mary’s, I found myself slowly being drained after attending the numerous ministry meetings. It seemed that my prayer life was going downhill. It looks like work was taking its toil on me. Even though I worked in the church, there was mass and the adoration room nearby yet I’ve hardly attended weekday mass or stepped into the adoration room.
After a while I confided in my employer and he mentioned that it was a normal thing to feel drained because if we are ministering to others and not being ministered to, then slowly we will feel drained. That’s why a good prayer life was important.
I thought about it and I realised that perhaps that was the problem. Perhaps I was too focused on doing things that I had forgotten who I was doing it for and also that I had been relying too much on my own strength.
After identifying the problem, during my off days in the middle of the week, I’d make it a point to go for mass. What better way to draw strength from the Lord than in the Eucharist? Things took a turn for the better.
Jesus beckons us to leave our things behind and join Him for a meal. It won’t take too long, just an hour. The one hour invested is definitely worth it.
Prayer for the day: Lord, thank You for Your invitation to come away and rest a while.
If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray?
This teaching of Jesus of abandoning 99 good sheep in search of the 1 who strayed away seems like such a radical teaching. In the business world, employers will not hesitate to just fire the errand employee.
After I started teaching in school, it was difficult to reach out to each and every student yet each and everyone of them are equally important. It was easy to just focus on the good ones and forget about those who are not interested. That’s when I realised that it might not be possible to do this in a classroom setting. In fact it seems like a bad thing to do because the rest of the class will be affected. I’ve been trying to reconcile this with the teaching of Jesus.
After some observations, I’ve come up with a conclusion. There are two ways to go about it. One is that the teacher just leaves them to their own devices and hope that they buck up. Two is that the teacher will have to put in extra effort and this translates to having to stay back after school hours to tend to the weaker students.
I see most of the teachers actually taking the second approach, which seems to reconcile the need to take care of the stray without affecting the rest of the class.
If after reading this post and you have any recommendations to make, please leave a comment below. Thanks!
Prayer for the day: Lord, help me to remember that each and every student is important.
Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Many people confuse this with the Virgin Birth of Jesus. The Immaculate Conception really is a Catholic dogma of faith which states that the Blessed Virgin Mary was conceived without Original Sin.
Many people have trouble accepting this and argue that Mary is only human. How can she be given such a privilege? If we really think about it, this privilege is a privilege to her not for her own sake, but for the sake of who she was to bear, Jesus.
If we can understand that the merits of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not bound by time, then it is not hard to understand that this merit was applied to Mary right at the start of her conception.
We must understand that our salvation is not only because of the divinity of Jesus, but rather His humanity. If it were only His divinity, then He could have just parted the clouds and said, “Alright guys, all of you are saved.” No. It is the very fact that He took on a human form and for this to happen, He had to be carried in the womb for nine months, just like any other human being that walks this earth. He came to show us that it was possible to align our human wills, the free will that is God’s gift to us, to God’s will. Everything that Jesus did was His Father’s will.
The Archangel Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail, full of grace!” to Our Lady should tell us something about Mary. Grace essentially is God’s life within us. Now, for her to be full of grace, this can only mean one thing. Where God is, there can be no sin. God and Sin are mutually exclusive. Further more, if we accept Jesus’ humanity, it wouldn’t make sense for God who is the creator of all, not to be able to create a spotless womb in which God Himself would lay.
As I mentioned at the start, all this for Mary is not for her sake, but rather for the sake of Jesus and this is possible because Mary said “Yes” to God. Her whole life was for the sake of God, the sake of Jesus. Let us then seek to be like her, the perfect disciple.
Prayer for the day: Mary, you are the mother of Christ and you are our mother also. Pray for us.
Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.
Today we move into the 2nd Sunday of Advent and the theme for the 2nd Sunday is “Peace”. Strangely the readings do not sound much of peace to me but a more of a conversion and preparation of heart but after further reading, I guess there is a slight connection.
In the 1st reading, we have a proclamation from the Prophet Isaiah about the coming of the Messiah who will take care of His flock. In the 2nd reading, St Peter writes about the day of the Lord’s return coming like a thief in the night when everyone least expects it. In the gospel, we have the appearance of John the Baptist who comes to fulfil the prophecy made by Isaiah in today’s 1st reading.
John the Baptist is a very important figure and we can tell because he is mentioned by all four of the gospel writers before the start of Jesus’ ministry. John the Baptist calls out to all, a call to repentance.
How then is peace related to repentance?
The story of St Bernadette and the miraculous spring of Lourdes should not be something that is alien but I’ll just write it here anyway.
Bernadette had a vision of a Lady. When she went back to the village and told the villagers. From her description, the villagers came to realise that the Lady was in fact, Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary. The villagers then pestered her to ask Our Lady for intercessions and for healing for the children of the village.
The next time Bernadette encountered Our Lady, the villagers were waiting anxiously for her response.“So did you ask Our Lady? What did she say?”
“Penance.”
The villagers thought they misheard Bernadette so they asked her a second time, “What was it that Our Lady said?”
“Penance.”
Thinking that Bernadette might have been a little hard of hearing, they asked her a third time, “Bernadette, what did Our Lady say about healing for our children?”
“Penance.”
And so the story goes, the villagers dismissed Bernadette as a lunatic, especially when she started eating the dirt and plants and drinking muddy water. But lo and behold, the fountain which brought forth healing sprung up from that very location.
The story of St Bernadette should tell us a very important point: Healing cannot take place without a conversion of heart. It is only through penance that healing can take place.
So after all this, what has penance, conversion of heart got to do with attaining peace? In continuously preparing our hearts and purging ourselves of everything that is evil and unsightly in the face of God, we attain peace knowing that no matter when Jesus returns, He will find us unblemished and unmarked, the way He left us after our baptisms. Am I going to heaven? Am I saved? All these questions no longer bother us because we know clearly what we have done and are at peace.
As we move closer towards Christmas, let us then continue to wait and prepare our hearts.
Prayer for the day: Lord, You sent John the Baptist to proclaim repentance. Help us now to turn back to You.
